Notes For A Memoir [Hardcover]

Although a psychiatrist by profession, fiction writer Asimov resists the temptation to over-analyze her relationship with husband Isaac Asimov, the prolific science fiction writer, in this lively nonfiction narrative. Keeping her recollections light and warm, with occasional interjections like, "I stopped listening and kissed him," Asimov focuses on the vitality of her subject. Apart from an occasionally grating know-it-all narrative voice, Asimov's memoir is a readable testament to a happy, productive union between two intelligent and creative individuals. Asimov celebrates the fame of Isaac's career, but also documents smaller successes, prioritizing the colorful-and nearly frivolous-tidbits that characterize their daily life ("I hope no reader of this book minds that I'm including what Isaac called maunderings and potterings. I hope the readers will also see his meaning"). She also takes time to describe her own formative years, her career, and her intense grief following Isaac's death. Readers familiar with Isaac Asimov the writer will enjoy his wife's take on Isaac Asimov the man, from his tireless sense of humor to his extraordinary intellectual capabilities, as well as his unusual role as leading man in a touching love story.
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It goes without saying that Janet Asimov's career has been overshadowed by that of her late husband, sf grand master Isaac Asimov, whose life she recently surveyed in a one-volume abridgment of his tripartite autobiography. Although her primary livelihood is that of a respected New York psychiatrist, her essays and stories in this collection reveal a literary intelligence every bit as sharp as that of her famous spouse. In a score of rambling yet engaging essays, she casts a capacious net over such diverse themes as the importance of imagination in living and writing, her experiences as a psychoanalyst, and the heavyweight topics of religion, philosophy, and sex. Isaac's fans will be pleased by the abundance of amusing anecdotes she tells about him, including reminiscences of the many train rides they took because of his aversion to flying. If the handful of fiction that rounds out the volume mostly echoes motifs of her husband's work, such as robotics and puns, she impresses with her knack for entertaining while informing. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

This charming book is a series of entertaining and thought-provoking musings, mainly about the imagination, the sense of identity, the compulsion to write, and Isaac Asimov - who, as Janet Asimov says, was good at all of them.