Fault Line

Reviews / Votes

"Exploring what role she might have played in [her first love's] tragic life and death, Alberts lays open her own life and youthful indiscretions, ultimately coming across as simply human. The result is poignant, if painful, reading. Highly recommended for libraries collecting contemporary fiction and literary memoirs."-Library Journal Library Journal "In this latest entry in the American Lives series, novelist Alberts writes a candid, self-lacerating memoir about her first love... A thoughtful, wrenching portrait of obsessive love."-Booklist Booklist "The essence of Alberts's writing in this book is that she is telling the truth. Her use of metaphor allows readers to sense the story's stark reality... Her descriptions evoke a sense of awe at the scenery, tempered by the rawness of Laurie's journey of self-discovery... Laurie reached within the chasms of her soul, and crossed over her own fault line."-Cheryl Freier, ForeWord -- Cheryl Freier ForeWord "Laurie Alberts has crafted her raw, devastatingly honest memoir with the language skills of a poet."-Rocky Mountain News Rocky Mountain News "[A] piercing memoir... [T]his is an utterly compelling elegy, a courageous and remorseful confession, and a candid and affecting inquiry into responsibility, influence, and fate."-Donna Seaman, Speakeasy -- Donna Seaman Speakeasy "Fault Line is as compelling a piece of nonfiction as I have read. Alberts expertly weaves a story that feels honest to the bone and leaves the reader raw and bereft yet grateful for such a skillful and heartfelt tale."-Robin Hemley, author of Invented Eden -- Robin Hemley "This beautifully written and unself-sparing memoir rips open the wounds of first love in search of what one person can be held accountable for in the ruin of another."-Chip Brown, author of Good Morning Midnight -- Chip Brown "In a book unrivaled in its precision of memory, Laurie Alberts describes a personal era marked by a definitive historical time. Her friend Kim's peculiar expatriation and mysterious death inspire Alberts's quest-even as they mark that quest as nearly unnavigable, a fault line running between past and present, its sorrows the margins, its solace the faintest, quaking epicenter."-Abby Frucht, author of Licorice and Are You Mine? -- Abby Frucht "As non-fiction, the narrative gives a distressing glimpse of the less-glamorous, sordid world of drug and alcohol addiction that went hand-in-hand in many cases during a decade often symbolized by happy, pot-smoking hippies and Beatles music. As a memoir, "Fault Line" is a well-written atonement, a requiem." --Melissa MacKenzie, Vermont Sunday Magazine -- Melissa MacKenzie