A Place in the Country Reviews
To purchase a copy -- click
here
Laura Shapiro - The New York Times Book Review
Cunningham makes it delightfully clear that the horrors of the simple life, from snakes to nasty neighbors, are right up front with the bliss. And she's a sharp and witty writer.
Ellie Barta-Moran, Booklist, June 1, 2000
"Read this because you want your own place in the country; read this
before you own a place in the country." --This text refers to an out
of print or unavailable edition of this title.
New York Post, July 9, 2000
Mixing humor, pastoral images and sharply etched characterizations of her
family and neighbors, Cunningham draws you in.... --This text refers to an
out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Entertainment Weekly, July 21, 2000
...a wry, funny account of her life-long country-house fever. This
addition to the dream-home genre is a breath of fresh air.
Redbook, October 2000
...required reading for anyone who's ever fantasized about stepping out of
civilization and becoming...country girl-for a while.
Publisher's Weekly
In her well-received memoir, Sleeping Arrangements (1989), Cunningham chronicled her years growing up in the Bronx. Now, in a book dedicated to all the city people "who love nature with a passion that is near demented in its innocence," the playwright and journalist recounts a lifelong love of greenery, and the pleasure and frustration she has found living in the Shawangunk Mountains of New York. As a child, Cunningham and her unmarried mother, Rose, were often forced to share cramped apartments with relatives, though they dreamed of owning "a private home" in the country. Then, when Cunningham was eight, her mother died. Years later, as a young married woman, she rented a house in a suburb of New York. Although she reveled in easy access to forest and mountain, the gated community didn't satisfy Cunningham's fantasy of country life, and after some 10 years of searching, she found her dream house in the mountains. Adjacent to a working dairy farm, the Inn was part of a huge estate that a titled English couple were gradually selling off, although they remained as neighbors. Cunningham recounts with wry humor her conversion from innocent newcomer to country sophisticate, a process that included raising chickens (whose eggs, she figures, cost her $25 a dozen), feeding two ornery goats and tending an ill-fated garden. Her pastoral life has been interrupted by serious illness, counterbalanced by her joy in adopting her two little girls. She passes quickly over the breakup of her marriage and concludes by describing her uneasy adjustment to new neighbors--a swami and his followers. Throughout, Cunningham's lovely portrait of country scenes will engage readers who, like her, have dreamed of the glories of a rural retreat. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business
Information.
Library Journal
Cunningham's memoir, a case for creative nonfiction, embodies Robert Frost's remark that "locality gives art." Now a playwright and journalist whose fiction has been published in The New Yorker and elsewhere, she offers compelling descriptions of her childhood in the Bronx, of a first country home 40 miles north of the city in a gated community of rentals and, later, of a real home in the country surrounded by farmers, animals, and other eccentric life forms. Humor serves as a cornerstone of her well-crafted prose and provides a counterbalance to the sometimes serious experiences of a child, and then an adult, in search of a country home. This memoir draws you in as a novel might, capturing your interest with plot and characters--Cunningham's mother, Rosie; her uncles Len and Gabe, who become "guardians of her fate"; and an intriguing array of neighbors are well worth meeting. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.--Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
Michiko Kakutan - The New York Times
[E]ngaging...Adept at poking fun at her and her husband's city-slicker dreams, Ms. Cunningham also gives us some delightful portraits of the people who became their neighbors and friends...