Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir

by D. J. Waldie

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Book cover for Holy Land

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Since its publication in 1996, Holy Land has become an American classic. In "quick, translucent prose" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) that is at once lyrical and unsentimental, D. J. Waldie recounts growing up in Lakewood, California, a prototypical post-World War II suburb. Laid out in 316 sections as carefully measured as a grid of tract houses, Holy Land is by turns touching, eerie, funny, and encyclopedic in its handling of what was gained and lost when thousands of blue-collar families were thrown together in the suburbs of the 1950s. An intensely realized and wholly original memoir about the way in which a place can shape a life, Holy Land is ultimately about the resonance of choices-how wide a street should be, what to name a park-and the hopes that are realized in the habits of everyday life.

  • ISBN10 0393327280
  • ISBN13 9780393327281
  • Publish Date 2 June 2005 (first published 17 June 1996)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint WW Norton & Co
  • Format Paperback
  • Pages 208
  • Language English