The Memory of All That

The Memory of All That is a rigorous, heartfelt, often shattering history of Weber's family and the people close to them. Making sense of family is always difficult but, for Weber, the difficulty is exacerbated because so many relatives are famous and widely written about, their stories of extramarital affairs, intimate betrayals, and falsehoods common knowledge...Weber takes advantage of her insider position to sort out lies and myths, and give readers the straight scoop on her celebrated kin. In doing so, and in using her novelist's skills in the development of character, she also lets us see what it is really like to inherit the legacy of so many stars behaving with such astounding infidelity to the ideas of truth, marriage, and family. <br>--Floyd Skloot, The Boston Globe <br> Highly appealing....a book infused with the doubt that we all bring to the contemplation of those mysterious beings who birthed us, along with our certainty that few subjects are more fascinating....It's when Ms. Weber remembers Papa that her considerable skills as a writer are most seductively on display. And it's not just because the exasperating Kaufman is such a good subject. It's that Ms. Weber is able to arrange words musically, so that they capture the elusive, unfinished melodies that haunt our memories of childhood. As her grandmother's lover might have put it, she's got rhythm. <br>-- The New York Times <br> The Memory of All That is less a family memoir than a family biography. Which is good because Weber's kin are more than fascinating enough to stand on their own without embellishments of personal memory. (A-) <br>-- Entertainment Weekly <br> Gracefully written, poignant and droll, The Memory of All That is a gifted author's brave look back at her eccentric, lively forbears -- their dealings, foibles and affairs. <br> --Dallas Morning News <br> Weber is an accomplished novelist; she knows well how to manipulate fictional form, as any reading of