Broom of One's Own, A | 
| Manufacturer: HarperCollins e-books
Category: EBooks
List Price: $10.95
Buy New: $8.76
You Save: $2.19 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 14390
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B0015WAON0
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
For the twice-published novelist, reading an article about herself in the National Enquirer -- under the headline "Here's One for the Books: Cleaning Lady Is an Acclaimed Author" -- was more than a shock. It was an inspiration.
In A Broom of One's Own, Nancy Peacock, whose first novel was selected by the New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year, explores with warmth, wit, and candor what it means to be a writer. An encouragement to all hard-working artists, no matter how they make a living, Peacock's book provides valuable insights and advice on motivation, craft, and criticism while offering hilarious anecdotes about the houses she cleans.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 A GREAT BOOK FOR BOTH READERS AND WRITERS July 10, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A collection of essays about creating and sustaining a writing life while trying to make a living, this small book offers insight and support to both published writers and wannabes, as well as an utterly fascinating look at what you learn about people when you clean their houses.
 Refreshing and wise. June 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is funny, wise and superbly written. Peacock is a novelist who has earned her living by cleaning houses, and her account of this has worlds to say about the writing life and how to cultivate it, and also about the rich, often overlooked tapestry of society, with the great themes that are underfoot. The house is the embodiment of the self, some phenomenologists have said, and this is what Peacock notices as she cleans them. With keen perception, she looks at dirt and clutter, show places and hidden places, colors and accoutrements, and sees the shapes of lives unconsciously expressed. In their houses people tell about themselves nakedly, albeit inadvertently. Peacock tells about herself too, openly but consciously. About these themes of life she is often funny, and sometimes acerbically perceptive, but also kind and understanding. Aspiring writers will find the book enormously refreshing as she writes about a universal struggle of the artist: how to earn a living doing something as base as dirt, and also honor that life in such a way as to transmogrify it into the stuff of art. She tells how, she shows how to do this.
A Book That Will Sweep You Off Your Feet June 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Nancy Peacock's new book, A BROOM OF ONE'S OWN, is a true gem. The clever title evokes Virginia Woolf and delves into the challenges faced by most creative artists--namely, earning a living to support one's work and finding the space and solitude to create that work. Each of the essays in this collection starts with an anecdote about housecleaning, and each piece moves smoothly toward a description of some aspect of the writer's life. The writing is seamless and clear and evocative. As other reviewers have noted, there is a great deal of wisdom--and often humor--in these short essays. Peacock speaks to all of us, whether or not we are artists, and whether or not we clean our own houses. A BROOM OF ONE'S OWN is that rare book that entertains the reader at the same time that it teaches.
I am tempted to say that A BROOM OF ONE'S OWN reminds me of other books that address the creative process--books like Annie Dillard's THE WRITING LIFE or Anne Lamott's BIRD BY BIRD--but the writer that Peacock reminds me of is May Sexton. I thought of Sexton's JOURNAL OF A SOLITUDE when I read Peacock's book. Both writers are intent on exploring the nature of solitude and how it nourishes us. Like Sexton, Peacock is a writer capable of revealing truth through the description of common objects and simple actions.
Peacock's two earlier books--LIFE WITHOUT WATER and HOME ACROSS THE ROAD--were novels, and both were acclaimed by critics. Peacock is a natural storyteller, and the characters in her fiction are as real and true to life as the homeowners depicted in A BROOM OF ONE'S OWN. Hopefully, the publication of A BROOM OF ONE'S OWN will send readers back to these wonderful novels.
A BROOM OF ONE'S OWN will sweep you off your feet.
Nancy Peacock speaks to writers and to all of us. June 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A Broom of One's Own is a delight--absorbing, sometimes surprising, often funny, wise. Nancy Peacock gives us a deep look into two worlds that may seem at first to be an unlikely pairing: that of a paid housecleaner and that of an insufficiently paid (although critically acclaimed--and with good reason, I can add) novelist. But a great many readers will recognize, as I did, the juggling act it can be between the work that sustains us physically and the work that sustains us creatively. Peacock has some fine things to say about that, and about how you can manage not to sell yourself short at one end while keeping yourself afloat at the other. She speaks to writers, certainly, and to artists in other areas, but I believe she also has something real to say to anyone who is trying to keep life larger than paying the rent.
She says it well, too. This is writing I sank into--smooth, transparent writing, that is often unexpected and always satisfying. It's a cliche to say, 'I couldn't put it down'--but I couldn't put it down. It pleased me a great deal to add it to the list of good reading for writers that I give out to students in the writing classes I teach.
Joyce Allen
 Vapid musings with a tinge of class struggle June 13, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Oh my, a memoir. What a great excuse to share self-indulgent observations of one's own wonderfulness with the world. I could see the point, at least partially, if her style truly sparkled, but it's mediocre, at best. Her view of the world from the standpoint of a cleaning lady is not in any way original or unexpected. It's just kind of unnecessary. Frankly, the whole thing is patronizing to cleaning ladies everywhere: here's one that can form a coherent sentence - let's celebrate! I don't think people who seriously believe that a cleaning lady is a creature of a lower order will ever find out that some of them are literate. I also don't think that the very fact of being literate should get anyone a book contract.
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