“My Father’s Guitar and Other Imaginary Things” by Joseph Skibell

A Facebook author friend, Haven Kimmel, recommended this book by her friend, and, since I admire her taste, I bought it. I was reading another book when MY FATHER’S GUITAR arrived, but decided to start Skibell’s anyway, and it hooked me from the start. I kept reading “just one more story”, put my old book aside, and stayed hooked by it for its two hundred pages of sixteen stories, all of which I found funny and sad and real.

Joseph Skibell was born in Lubbock, Texas, lived in the Midwest, and now lives in Atlanta and New Mexico. He tells the tales of his whacky, cantankerous, Jewish family with a rather sweet southern voice I find charming. He has just the right amount of self-deprecation, and he doesn’t hesitate to reveal his faults and flaws in an honest, disarming way. “Voice” is so important in memoir, and Skibell’s voice is divine.

A great voice is not enough though. A memoirist needs good stories. Skibell has a wealth of great stories from his life as a writer, teacher, parent, and husband, and he tells them with humor and warmth. He writes of turning the tables on a telemarketer, of exploring a possible family connection to a Holocaust work of art, of wishing he could wield more influence over his teenage daughter, and, in his title story, of confusing memory with wistfulness around his father’s guitar. One of his stories features dialog with a southern woman, and he writes her thick dialect so explicitly and so well, I found myself speaking it aloud and getting tickled.

One of the best compliments you can pay a memoirist is to say you’d like to meet him. Skibell scores here too. I find him just quirky enough, and I love that he’s irreverent and silly and caring, and that he blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, and that he seems to be a good man. Another compliment to Skibell’s writing is that I want to read his other books. His novel, A BLESSING ON THE MOON is, I’m told, the one I should read next.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert (EAT, PRAY, LOVE), says that, in order to live a creative life, one must take the path of curiosity over fear. Joseph Skibell’s curiosity has led him to places and situations that provided fabulous fodder for his stories. MY FATHER’S GUITAR is well worth reading.