Julie Wittes SchlackRezensionen

Burning and Dodging is a way of making photographs show only what you want them to. This story is the process of unburning and undodging old "truths" to bring the actual truth to light. Everyone's life is turned every which way as a result.

I generally enjoy reading books featuring women in their 50s and 60s. However, this one was difficult for me to finish. I liked the author’s witty style and would like to read more of her writing. I also appreciated the details about Tina’s research into the provenance of Peter’s photos. I just did not relate to Tina’s past, present or potential future.

Burning and Dodging by Julie Wittes Schlack: An early reader review
This story follows the ponderings of a sixty-something woman who still hasn’t figured things out (but who among us has?) She has floated her entire life, trying people on and kicking them off like old shoes never quite satisfied with anyone. She does seem committed to photography as a source of truth, but even that assumption comes into question. There are interesting interpretations of various events from different characters’ points of view-- which only adds to her confusion and ambiguity. I guess that adds to the reality but I could not read this book in large blocks because I needed time to consider her observations. There were some really outstanding ideas (for instance: “looking is an act of imagination”), but overall, I think it boils down to the fact that we all see what we want to see no matter what we are really experiencing.½

I have to admit, that what primarily attracted me to this book was its connection to photography. After reading this, I truly enjoyed how cleverly the references to photography were used and how it tied in with the story (-ies) main character was (is) living in.
Realistic story, with flashbacks to the past. Even though it is fairly easy to read novel, it does have few interesting thoughts, that keeps reader thinking, even after finished reading it.
However, I the ending of the book was slow first and then suddenly abrupt. It feels like there could have been more to it. But, maybe it was author's intention to leave it up to the reader?

This All-At-Onceness: A Memoir of Hope and Satellites, by Julie Wittes Schlack, is a collection of essays, simultaneously linked and independent, that performs a dazzling dance on a paradoxical tightrope. On the one hand, this is a non-linear and unchronological journey through the life of a remarkable 60+ year old woman whose experiences are profoundly individual, unusual, and eclectic – born into an English-speaking close-knit Jewish family in Montreal, an initially unhappy but ultimately affirmative adolescent move to Ann Arbor, summers in deeply eccentric progressive camps, years of blue-collar labor in the service of political activism, founding a collaborative software start-up company. At the same time, these musings simultaneously speak to the shared experiences of a generation – the Summer of Love, UFO sightings, marches against the Vietnam War, Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, 9-11, the unspeakable rise of Trump, and all the music along the way. Also paradoxical is the blend of skepticism, sometimes veering into cynicism, tempered by a never completely exhausted wellspring of idealism, hope, and – yes – joy. Wittes Schlack is an unforgettable and irresistible unifying guide throughout; fiercely intelligent, engagingly vulnerable, disturbingly honest, disarmingly funny.