**I HAVE NOT BEEN AS PROFOUNDLY MOVED BY A BOOK IN YEARS’ JODI PICOULT**
**I LOVED THIS BOOK MORE THAN I CAN SAY**NIGELLA LAWSON
A brilliantly original memoir of a grandmother speaking to her granddaughter from beyond the grave, telling the story of her life with hilarious candor and love.
Bess Kalb has saved every voicemail message her grandmother – her best friend, her confidante – ever left her until the day she died.
In this wildly imaginative memoir, Bobby Bell’s voice is still in Bess’s head. Stubborn, glamorous, larger than life, she gives Bess critical advice on everything and tells the history that made them both. Beginning with her mother’s escape from the pogroms of Belarus in the 1880s to the rambunctiously cramped Brooklyn apartment where Bobby was born, it swings through her loving marriage, blazes over the rebellious youth of her daughter and finally – falls madly in love with her granddaughter, Bess.
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me are the truths – full of devotion, killer instincts and hard-won experience – that Bess’s grandmother tells even when they hurt – and even though she’s gone.
This unusual love story celebrates the bond of women across generations and the personalities that live on through grief and love. Told through documents, photographs, and verbatim dialogue, it’s a memoir like none you’ve ever read before.
**I LOVED THIS BOOK MORE THAN I CAN SAY**NIGELLA LAWSON
A brilliantly original memoir of a grandmother speaking to her granddaughter from beyond the grave, telling the story of her life with hilarious candor and love.
Bess Kalb has saved every voicemail message her grandmother – her best friend, her confidante – ever left her until the day she died.
In this wildly imaginative memoir, Bobby Bell’s voice is still in Bess’s head. Stubborn, glamorous, larger than life, she gives Bess critical advice on everything and tells the history that made them both. Beginning with her mother’s escape from the pogroms of Belarus in the 1880s to the rambunctiously cramped Brooklyn apartment where Bobby was born, it swings through her loving marriage, blazes over the rebellious youth of her daughter and finally – falls madly in love with her granddaughter, Bess.
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me are the truths – full of devotion, killer instincts and hard-won experience – that Bess’s grandmother tells even when they hurt – and even though she’s gone.
This unusual love story celebrates the bond of women across generations and the personalities that live on through grief and love. Told through documents, photographs, and verbatim dialogue, it’s a memoir like none you’ve ever read before.
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Reviews
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb. It's a unique book, told through the lens of Bess's grandmother, Bobby, who passed away, as a way of keeping her alive. Inside the book are old photos, texts and voicemail transcripts. Their close relationship made me pine after my own grandparents, who are no longer here
A sparkling memoir . . . This tribute shows the fierce love they shared along with happy memories, as the author paints a picture of this larger-than-life glamorous figure. It's full of truths, devotion and hard-won experience.
A charming memoir to enjoy for a quick beach read, or lately, when quarantined at home
Kalb has refreshingly reinvented the family memoir. It is also a tribute to four generations of feisty Jewish women speaking for themselves . . . [Bobby's] spirit is too vast and her heart so big that, by the time I reached the final section, After Me, I too was under her spell.
Full of bittersweet cheek and wisecracking wisdom, it's an ideal tonic for anyone missing elderly relatives.
I am so charmed by this book and wish my grandmother were still alive so I could call her
I loved this book by Bess Kalb more than I can say. Well, maybe I can say: I first bought it as an e-book and adored it so much, I got it as an audiobook. Then I listened to it (twice) and loved it, if possible, even more. So then I ordered it in hardback (and got a few as presents while I was about it) and am excitedly impatient to read it again.
I cried twice . . . Reading, I delighted in Bobby's joy.
I have not been as profoundly moved by a book in years. Bess Kalb's fictional factual tribute to the relationship she had with her grandmother - the way her history was passed to her by blood, along with bright memories and Jewish guilt and fierce, fierce love - could have been my own story. When I stop crying, I'm calling my mother immediately and making her read it. If you have a mother or grandmother, or ARE a mother or a grandmother, this is required reading
One of the most charming personal narratives I've ever read. Kalb has all the exacting craftsmanship of Joan Didion, the wit of David Sedaris, and a heart that is so brimming with affection that you feel as though Bobby is your own grandmother. This book is up there with Steel Magnolias in terms of 'things my mum and I ugly cry at together'. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want to convert to Judaism
Kalb, a writer for 'Jimmy Kimmel Live', channels the voice of her beloved grandmother, Bobby, in this affecting project, which she calls an oral history of four generations of women in her family. The book brims with anecdotes, advice from Bobby, texts and even transcribed voice mail messages
**Best Books of 2020** In this moving book, part imagined memoir of her grandmother, part family history, Kalb explores the bond between grandmother and granddaughter, unbreakable even in death.