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New West Book Review

Kiss and Tell: Claudia Sternbach’s ‘Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses’

By Jenny Shank, 4-25-11

Claudia Sternbach’s moving memoir Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses (Unbridled Books, 224 pages, $12.95) is composed of essays about the memorable kisses in her life. It’s a clever concept, but what makes this book so easy to love is its offbeat execution of this idea—you never quite know how the kiss will turn up in the stories. Will it be a comforting kiss, an ominous kiss, a romantic kiss, or a missed kiss?  Sternbach has written newspaper columns for many years, and her breezy prose has a natural, effortless quality that is surely the result of great care.

One of the strengths of Reading Lips is Sternbach’s ability to capture the evolution of her thoughts, emotions, and sensory perceptions at each age. The voice is recognizably the same, but in the early chapters the details convey the quirky viewpoints of a child’s perception, free of the rote language adults use to describe common objects and experiences, like this moment from a visit to her mother’s office: “She showed us her desk, stacked with papers and in and out boxes. And the machine she used to do all of the adding and subtracting. She showed us how it worked. I liked the sound it made. Noisier than a typewriter. A fatter noise.”

Sternbach’s voice evolves and grows, from the little girl still shocked and uncomprehending about why her dad left her mother, to the self-deprecating young divorcée who decides she’s had enough of men, to the mother and wife emerging, shell-shocked, from treatment for breast cancer.

One constant shared between the young and mature Sternbach is her appealing sense of humor. Like most children, she’s quick to poke fun at authority figures she doesn’t like, such as in these thoughts about a teacher: “Old Miss Morrison went on and on about how this summer she was taking her mother, the even Older Mrs. Morrison, to see Mt. Rushmore. It was, according to Miss Morrison, ‘a lifelong dream.’ Miss Morrison wore so much powder every day that bits of it were always scattered all over her dress. She looked like one of the faces they were gonna drive a million miles to go and see.”

As Sternbach grows older, takes plenty of lumps, and makes her own mistakes, she becomes more forgiving of other people, and is more likely to direct the humor at herself, as in the hilarious “Double Fault,” in which she chides herself for the naïve way she struck up a relationship with an inmate at San Quentin. “Have you ever been to San Quentin? I’m telling you, they have quite a view. Or would if they had many windows. But the walk up the hill, once you have parked in the small gravel lot and waited in the very long line with all the interesting folks who also have loved ones in prison—who are also, I’m sure, innocent of all charges—and gone through the first check point and out the door to the sidewalk leading up to the visiting room, has a spectacular view.”

Another funny essay is “Winging It,” which begins, “I suppose if I had to list every occupation I have ever had, I could put diamond smuggler on the list.” Sternbach details the time she worked as a flight attendant for a new airline in the ‘70s, when such employees were weighed regularly and schooled in grooming tips. “It was what I imagine training for a beauty pageant must be like. We actually did have to work on finding the perfect hairstyle.” Her “fun friend” Jason, a fellow flight attendant, involves her in his scheme to import diamonds from Amsterdam without checking in through customs.

In the way she constructs her essays, Sternbach puts the reader by her side, experiencing the moments of her life along with her, so that unexpected events come across as true surprises for the reader.  The charming essay “Stolen Kiss” begins with Sternbach’s best friend Babs delivering this information: “Teddy K., she told me, had decided he was going to kiss me at the end of the school day tomorrow.” Sternbach chronicles her flitting emotions as she contemplates the prospect of receiving her first kiss. When we learn in a later essay what happens to Teddy K. when he’s a young man, it hits like a punch. The same is true for Sternbach’s struggle with cancer (which she discussed more extensively in her 1999 memoir Now Breathe), and the essay in which she finds out her younger sister has cancer. Sternbach’s understated, detailed delivery of these stories effectively evoke emotion in the reader.

In Reading Lips, Sternbach delivers a kiss to all the significant people and events in her life.

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