Review of I Have Calluses on My Hands

[Jaadugar Yadu]

[Following is a volunteer review of "I Have Calluses on My Hands" by Neil Henry.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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Neil Henry's I Have Calluses on My Hands is a poignant and intimate portrait of his father, Harold Henry. Harold's life is divided and presented according to the different stages of his life; hence, the book is more or less a chronicle of Harold's life. This is a very nice book that reveals the motivation of a generation of the American working generation and the theme of family relationships.

The plot presents itself as a biography of Harold, from his birth to his old age, and covers every key period in his life. Throughout the book, Henry can mix firsthand experience and knowledge of history, which gives the reader an appropriate view of the American industrial revolution. Henry avails himself partly of simple narrative and partly of imagery. He learns perfectly how to depict the most tender and warm moments of ordinary life: how people may laugh at the dinner table or listen to their hearts in failure at the end of life. The story is replete with the scenes typical of that period of American history: the hardships of the Depression and the hope of post-war America.

Although essentially a loving tribute to Harold, the memoir occasionally goes completely off-track to provide potted family histories and unrelated childhood reminiscences. It may be for this reason that some readers might regard these sections as somewhat self-serving and diverting attention from the story proper. Although these were small problems in the book, I Have Calluses on My Hands is inspiring and emotive. It is a book that speaks to the spirit of American working people and the value of family. It is a beautiful thing to watch a son love his father and be proud of him, and this is evident in the writing of Henry, thus making this memoir a beautiful narrative that I will never forget.

Harold's experiences as the main character subgenre may enlighten the reader's emotional experience of the book if the emphasis on the sequences' various dramatic components were stronger. The editing is mostly good; all these texts are coherent and, for the most part, free from superfluous elegance. I would give I Have Calluses on My Hands 5 out of 5 stars, as it is a worthy contribution to the family memoirs and should be interesting to readers who admire the stories of people overcoming hardships.

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I Have Calluses on My Hands
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