Brian Hieggelke

She sits beside her mother’s deathbed and makes notes for the obituary she will submit for a woman so proud of her daughter’s writing that she maintained a "shrine." So begins Patricia Hampl’s loving memoir of her parents and her not especially dysfunctional family, the more usual grist for the memoirist mill. In fact, growing up in postwar St. Paul, Minnesota with a Czech father and an Irish mother, Hampl’s story might be our collective Midwestern experience. She writes honestly and humorously of her parent’s lives—her father, a handsome man who worked as a florist to the carriage trade, and her mother, a raconteur who’d regale her daughter’s imagination with an outsider’s perspective of society galas that her husband’s trade gained them entrée to—with vivid and moving detail and prose of uncommon clarity and verve. Anyone who’s confronted the inevitability of aging parents or grandparents will find universal resonance in these pages.

Patricia Hampl reads from "The Florist’s Daughter" on October 11 at The Book Stall at Chestnut Court, 811 Elm Street, Winnetka, at 7pm.

(2007-10-09)

Also by Brian Hieggelke

Tip of the Week
In "Away," Amy Bloom crafts a masterful epic about the journey of Lillian Leyb, a Russian emigrant in flight from a horrific pogrom that destroys her family, who winds up in New York on her feet (and on her back, at times) as a mistress of an impresario of the Yiddish theater. When she finds out that the daughter she thought perished might be alive, she sets out on the impossible journey to Siberia by way of crossing America into Alaska
(2007-09-18)

Searching for Shelter
In a nuanced, witty text, McCullough explores what happens when one of her characters feels compelled to step in and try to help a battered mother who seems to be prostituting herself to get by
(2007-09-11)

Bohemian Requiem
On Maxwell Street, just off Halsted, a marker recounts the significance of the market that once flourished here, a part of the city's commercial, ethnic and cultural history. Around it, sparkling new brick condos and picture-perfect retail shops make up a kind of pop-up neighborhood, an urban planner's dream, albeit virtually nondescript as to its place in the city's history
(2007-08-28)

Play Ball
With spring comes Chicago's annual civil war some call baseball. So how's a stylish fellow supposed to take his side?
(2007-03-27)

The Hollywood Issue
(2007-02-20)

Super Special
(2007-01-30)

Tip of the Week
(2007-01-09)

Who are the 100 Most Famous Chicagoans?
(2006-11-07)

Chicago Fame 150
(2006-11-07)

The Nineties in Rerun
(2006-08-22)

By Design
(2006-08-01)

Sand on the Brain
(2006-06-06)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment