From Bobby to Bess: meet the larger-than-life ladies
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me By Bess Kalb
Virago, £14.99 Reviewed by Sipora Levy
Shortlisted for the Wingate Prize and endorsed by Jodi Picoult and Nigella Lawson among others, Bess Kalb’s memoir is a memorial to her outrageous and much-loved grandmother, Bobby Bell, whose insistent voice is “heard” from beyond the grave. It is an unusual love story, celebrating their inter-generational bond through voice-mails, photographs, verbatim text and family reminiscences.
By interweaving these techniques, Kalb has refreshingly re-invented the family memoir. It is also a tribute to four generations of feisty Jewish women speaking for themselves. Bobby recounts how her mother fled the pogroms in Russia at the age of 12, after her family had been largely destroyed by the Tsar’s regime. When she had raised the equivalent of 20 US dollars, and without even saying goodbye to her mother, she packed a small bag and was taken to the Austrian border by the milkman. Surviving a horrendous journey by land and sea, she finally arrived in New York, where she made a life for herself.
Bobby had a complex relationship with her daughter, Robin, Kalb’s mother. Painfully honest, she admits that she found it difficult to bond with her, and when Robin started developing challenging behaviour and severe headaches at the age of 10, the formidable Bobby took her to a paediatrician — “a lovely woman”— and demanded that she cured Robin by “giving her something”. Robin was then prescribed Phenobarbital, which for someone at such a young age is shocking. Bobby later learned that a form of this drug was used to execute criminals.
In some ways, Robin is the true heroine of this memoir, having experienced a difficult and at times almost abusive relationship with Bobby, she became a doctor, created her own family and had the generosity of spirit to enable Kalb and Bobby to form a very close bond.
Bobby Bell involved herself in Kalb’s life to such a degree that it seems almost natural that she should still be advising her after she dies. The most moving (and funny) sections are those conveying Bobby’s comments from the hereafter, on the funeral, shivah and what follows.
Bess Kalb honed her comedic writing skills as a scriptwriter on the popular American TV show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, for which she won a Writer’s Guild Award. She admits that hers is not an objective account, but “rather a representation of a life, an echo, an impression, shaped and blurred through two generations and many retellings”.
How much you like or even love Kalb’s Nobody Will Tell You This But Me may depend on how fond you are of yentas — those indomitable busybodies who vicariously live through other people.
At times, I felt that Bobby’s voice grated and I longed for someone to put her in her place.
However, her 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.
Her spirit is vast, her heart so big and by the time I reached the final section, I, too, was under her spell