Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea | Catherine Goldhammer

Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea | Catherine Goldhammer | Memoir of a childhood friend

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Still Life with Ch...

	Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea Catherine Goldhammer Hudson Street Press, 2006 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

chickens calm a new life in this memoir

Who knew a memoir mainly about chickens could be so interesting? Catherine Goldhammer starts her life over in a house by the sea which might not look that appealing but has charm nonetheless. She divorces and her daughter, Emma who is 12, move about 1 1/2 mile from their old home and begin a new life. The only thing to ensure Emma's happiness at moving is to promise the purchase of chickens! There is heaps to do with setting up a new home and the caretaking of chickens is no small task.

This memoir will surely entertain and inspire. Perhaps you will wish you had a coop of chickens in your yard by the end!

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Memoir of a childhood friend

I didn't know about this book until, out of the blue, after almost 40 years, Cathy sent me a note about its publication. She even remembered the name of my dog, and that my sister had a deep voice! No wonder this book reads with such detail, and such warmth!In her memoir, she brings back memories of MY grandmother and HER chickens. I too, remember the little golden yolks of eggs about to be future eggs in the cavities of the chicken which had just met its demise by the woodpile, on the chopping block. Grandma's farm DID have a rooster, who protected his brood, and ever since just the thought of Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, bring back the rooster attack in the henyard! Alternately,I laughed, and became teary eyed at parts. IT is indeed the story of a middle-aged woman who is redefining her life, finding power in the love of family and friends, and with a "HAVE AT IT" spirit.For anyone who has ever had workmen into your living space, you will relate. For anyone trying to raise a tweenage daughter, you will relate. For anyone with a loving heart, you will relate. A delightful read, short enough to pack into an overnight bag as a perfect weekend read.My sister,(with the deep voice)loved the book as well, and said that Cathy's photo on the jacket has the same impish smile as when we were in Brownies together! p.s. You'll learn more about chickens than you could ever imagine!

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inspiring memoir

In her fifties and beginning to think of what she will do during her golden years, Catherine Goldhammer instead finds herself obtaining a divorce albeit an amiable one from her husband. The immediate impact is being economically poorer and raising their twelve years old daughter by herself. She relocates from affluent suburbia with her offspring to a fixer upper New England cottage that came with six two-day old chicks. Catherine bought the house and the chicks with the former for her and the latter to occupy her daughter. This terrific insightful memoir reflects the year she adjusted all cylinders of her life starting with raising the chickens and renovating a dump that the two female Goldhammers loosely called home. In the process she also repaired a broken psyche. Her fears especially for her daughter, her joy over minuscule successes, and her euphoria that the hard work starting with the bribery chickens that saved her soul make for inspired reading.

Harriet Klausner

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Zen Chickens! YES!

If you've never met one(or more)then you have no basis for comparison but everything Catherine says about the chickens and their transcendence is 100% true. I loved the story. I especially loved the part about her respect for wildlife and how that conflicted with her need to keep her small feathered family safe. I carefully walk that line everyday. A great story of starting over, and remodeling her life as she remodels the little house by the sea. Best of luck and life to you, Catherine and Emma!

Goldhammer's Got Game

Catherine Goldhammer's Still Life with Chickens delivers its promise of being a story about starting over, or restarting--after the author realizes that her life isn't working, and that she needs or wants another life: a different one, a better one.

Still Life is well-written, thoughtful,and funny, with no dead weight. The prose is simple, crisp, and elegant. The chickens in the story serve as central metaphor for the author's and her daughter Emma's transition to a new life and a new home. They serve as both attraction and distraction, enabling Ms. Goldhammer to coax, with baby chicks, her own twelve-year-old chick out of the familiar and safe home she grew up in. The chick's delicate little bodies and tentative hold on life mirror mother and daughter's struggle to transition out of the relative serenity of one house and into another--a house by the sea--a somewhat ramshackle building which Catherine sees in a new light, and rebuilds with vision, and which becomes Dragonfly Farm: a place of love and regeneration.

Catherine's daughter Emma, whom the mother obviously adores, is smart and sensitive and also a source of strength and humor for her mother.

Still Life with Chickens is a carefully crafted, wonderful book about mothers and daughters, abiding love, and the magical powers of place, home, and the animals we love.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6

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