Review: A Life’s Journey by Robert Furmaga

Paging through the chapters of his own adventurous existence, Robert Furmaga delivers a thoughtful and nostalgia-heavy memoir in A Life’s Journey: Choice and Circumstance.

Revealing the seminal moments and unforgettable events that shaped him, this is a compelling anthology of essays and treasured memories, combined neatly with professional achievements and personal accolades. From even the author’s earliest years of life, he recounts clear-eyed scenes and nuanced details of his successes, failures, and hard-won lessons, from terrifying tumbles out of bed and touching instances of parental bonding to the overindulgences of his teenage years and those first stumbling errors of high school romance.

His multiple stints of years working in New Orleans as an engineer in the oil and gas industry are told with the same color and curiosity as his childhood, while his abbreviated tales from Mexico City, Brazil, Europe, and more reinforce his vibrant personality as a perennial wanderer and tinkerer. The third part of the book, “Persons of Interest,” adds welcome flavor to the narrative, filling in more of the blank parts of Furmaga’s life, and diving into more abstract subjects and themes related to relationships, maturity, and intimate thoughts.

Benefitting from what Furmaga calls an autobiographical memory, this is an unusually detailed and vivid memoir, which is closer to a compilation of immersive anecdotes than a traditional life story. Even so, these stark snapshots of the past paint a compelling portrait of the author’s life and specific corners of American culture from the 1940s all the way through the end of the century.

Though these nearly photographic recollections make it easy for readers to place themselves in these spaces and times, the prose in the early sections can feel somewhat cold or journalistic, without a true sense of emotion to fully immerse readers in the moment. Generally, there is a declarative and distanced tone to much of the writing, along with abrupt endings and unusual choices regarding what elements of the stories to include. Some of the pieces veer into the weeds of unimportant details and unrelated tangents, or present a vivid setting but then rush through the actual points of interest in the story.

In some cases, the author will allude to greater detail in a given story, but then skip forward quickly, rather than adding fuller context. In the two pages about “Ruth,” for example, he references a series of events and expectations that led to the end of his multi-year connection, but leaves out most of the critical details. It feels at times as if the author is too close to his own experiences to recognize which are exceptional, or worth exploring deeper, which is not uncommon for memoirs. An editor familiar with short story, essay, and memoir formats could suggest areas for expansion or adjustment that would easily raise the quality and depth of the entire collection.

That said, the blunt and honest prose is also charming in its simplicity, and only leaves the reader wanting more from these intriguing stories, so these minor critiques in storytelling prowess are easy to ignore, given Furmaga’s sincerity, passion, and dedication to crafting this intricate memoir.