I recently taught a great group of short story writers in my workshop for The Quebec Writers Federation (QWF) called Re-Vision: Shaping Short Stories. The class was about literally looking again at your pieces and shaping them in a sculptural process.
I was pleased folks brought in stories in all stages of draft form. When a piece was promising but went out in many directions, I would ask the writer to tell our group--IN ONE SENTENCE--what's the story? It was a great discipline to focus one's thoughts, ideas, and distill to the bone.
Of course a great story has numerous themes. But I think a great story can also be distilled down to a sentence that will express it's core.
Just back from TO and The Canadian Jewish Book Awards where we winners, btw, were asked to speak for 3 minutes and many spoke for 15! (Ah the limelight)! I am off this end-week to New York City, home of my birth to the Jewish Book Council's "Meet the Author" event, where we will each pitch our novel in two minutes.
So, I have distilled the essence of The White Space Between down to a cogent two minute talk.
The JBC has a great coach who worked with me on several drafts and guess what? You can say a hell of a lot in two minutes. Try it. It's bracing.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
White Space Wins!
Great news! I'm honored that The White Space Between has won The 2009 Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction. I'll be attending the awards ceremony in Toronto on May 25th and look forward to meeting the other authors, the jury, as well as spending time with the wonderful team of women at my publisher,Second Story Press.
Although one can't count on honors in this business of writing fiction, it is a lovely validation when it happens. What matters most is that readers find my books and that they are moved and connect with the characters and their stories.
I'm grateful.
See you in Toronto!
Although one can't count on honors in this business of writing fiction, it is a lovely validation when it happens. What matters most is that readers find my books and that they are moved and connect with the characters and their stories.
I'm grateful.
See you in Toronto!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
I'm Off to...Minneapolis!
Dear Friends,
I'm off tomorrow, May 1st to Minneapolis, MN, to visit my BFF and to do two events for The White Space Between.
I'll be reading from and chatting about the novel at the Sabes JCC on Wednesday May 6th at 7 p.m. The JCC is at 4330 S. Cedar Lake Road. Phone: 952-381-3400 or check www.sabesjcc.org Elijah's Cup will be on hand with copies of the novel.
Then on Thursday, May 7th, at 11 a.m., I'll be interviewed about the novel on Write On Radio! at KFAI with Lynette, so tune in.
The rest of the time, I plan to have a blast with my BFF Carla Hagen whom I met on a writing retreat in Costa Rica some years back. We will hike and we will bike and we will talk all night long and drink lattes and perhaps swim on a rainy day.
Can't wait!
See you in Minneapolis.
-Ami
I'm off tomorrow, May 1st to Minneapolis, MN, to visit my BFF and to do two events for The White Space Between.
I'll be reading from and chatting about the novel at the Sabes JCC on Wednesday May 6th at 7 p.m. The JCC is at 4330 S. Cedar Lake Road. Phone: 952-381-3400 or check www.sabesjcc.org Elijah's Cup will be on hand with copies of the novel.
Then on Thursday, May 7th, at 11 a.m., I'll be interviewed about the novel on Write On Radio! at KFAI with Lynette, so tune in.
The rest of the time, I plan to have a blast with my BFF Carla Hagen whom I met on a writing retreat in Costa Rica some years back. We will hike and we will bike and we will talk all night long and drink lattes and perhaps swim on a rainy day.
Can't wait!
See you in Minneapolis.
-Ami
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Sounds of Silence
Dear Friends,
To all of you who were present at this week's Shabbat service at Dorshei-Emet, Saturday, April 18th, thank you for your warmth and support. It was fulfilling to give the D'var Torah this week, in honor of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which we are marking this Tuesday, April 21st, the 27th day of Nisan, the Memorial Day for the six million Jewish martyrs who perished in the Holocaust. Observed throughout the world, it is a day of heartrending significance, the same date as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
For readers who were not with us, here is my D'var Torah in honor of Yom Hashoah:
Today's Torah portion really speaks to me because it addresses the archetypal tragedy of unexplained, irredeemable loss. What is the response to that loss? And what does it mean?
First, let's look at what actually happens in this parashah. On the surface, it is deceptively simple. Yet, scholars have been discussing and debating the portion for centuries.
Aaron and his sons will be honored through ordination as priests, as kohanim. This should be a deeply fulfilling and joyful day for them. Instead, during the ceremony, Aaron's sons Nadam and Abihu bring "alien fire" to the ceremony and then God's fire consumes them. Aaron's response is silence.
Here, I will read the passage for you:
"Now Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the Lord, alien fire, which He had not enjoined upon them. And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus, they died at the instance of the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, 'This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy. And gain glory before all people.
And Aaron was silent.
What does Aaron's silence mean?
Is his silence shock?
Is his silence acceptance of God's decree? The silence of respect?
Is his silence rage?
Is his silence an anguish too great for words? Is his silence speechlessness, that is a loss for words, because language cannot encompass the enormity of his loss?
I believe that the text is suggesting that there are more possibilities--and more power--in silence than in any words when faced with unspeakable loss.
There are many sounds of silence.
As we approach and honor Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we need to reflect on our own response to unspeakable loss, as individuals, and as a community.
In my novel, The White Space Between, I address this very theme: the meaning of silence, the sounds of silence, in the face of unspeakable loss and tragedy, specifically, the Holocaust.
The German writer, Peter Handke, in his beautiful memoir, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, about his mother's suicide, said, "I write out of speechlessness."
I certainly felt a bit of this sentiment when approaching the daunting task of writing a novel about a mother and daughter grappling with the impact of the Holocaust.
My title, The White Space Between, speaks directly to the themes of my book. What is the white space? Well, the white space is literally the space between the letters, the space between the words, the space between the sentences. This white space gives the letters, the words, the sentences, their meaning. Without this white space, there would only be blackness, no form, no shape. A black blank, if you will.
Just as pauses, silence, gives meaning to the notes in music, silence gives meaning to speech, white spaces give meaning to words. They are active, alive.
As the writer Andre Neher says in his fascinating book, The Exile of the Word: From the Silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz, "silence often appears in the Bible in the first person:it has a role, it is active, pregnant.
In my novel, the white space between is also, as Rabbi Avi Weiss says in the epigraph, "the story, the song, the silence."
How did I come to write my novel, The White Space Between? Well, my personal connection to the Holocaust is through my mother-in-law, Brana Hochova, who was a survivor of three concentration camps: Terezin, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald. Like many Holocaust survivors, she did not speak much about her experiences during the war. She wanted to protect her children from the pain and weight of the past. She wanted to go forward. But how can one go forward when effacing the past? Because every time you turn around, there it is.
Sadly, I never knew Brana personally. She died very young, at 52 years old, a legacy of what she went through in the camps. However, she left behind a cassette tape where she spoke about her childhood and her life. Listening to this tape, her voice is very powerful, deep and soft, with a strong Czech accent, the accent of her youth, her identity. Listening to this tape, it was as if Brana was right there in the room with me. This tape filled in some of the white spaces...for me.
In fact, listening to Brana speak, after her death, I was struck by the power of voices, of story, after a long silence, how voices possess enduring life beyond corporeal life: they live on. How voices can be a link, a bridge, between the past and the present, the dead and the living, the lost and the found.
In my novel, Jana Ivanova, a Holocaust survivor also does not speak of her past. She wants to protect her only child, Willow, a marionette-maker and puppeteer, whose puppets become a kind of surrogate family, since she knows so little of her own.
Willow has so many white spaces, so much silence, that she does not even know who her father is. Her mother's struggle to spare her the pain of the past has left her incomplete, longing to find her missing history.
My novel explores the shadow side of silence, of too much white space, which becomes a white-out, an effacement, a kind of hiding, a negation of truth and identity.
Sometimes, one fills in the white space, the silence, with a new history, as the mother, Jana, does in my novel by creating a father for Willow: a French-Canadian man who loved Willow and died before her birth.
My novel explores the consequences of filling white space, of filling silence, with a fabricated recreation of history.
Toward the end of my novel, Willow loses her mother Jana, to a natural death, after a full, complicated, heroic life. Jana goes to her grave with some--but not all--of her secrets and silence. Now that her mother is dead, there are no more chances for Willow to speak to Jana or for Jana to speak to Willow.
"Willow has so many things she wants to ask her mother, questions she has saved up for a lifetime. Part of her feels like she is waiting for her mother to come to her, to speak. The questions, she knows, will remain open-ended. They will be the way she will miss her mother, through what she does not know and can never understand.
To all of you who were present at this week's Shabbat service at Dorshei-Emet, Saturday, April 18th, thank you for your warmth and support. It was fulfilling to give the D'var Torah this week, in honor of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which we are marking this Tuesday, April 21st, the 27th day of Nisan, the Memorial Day for the six million Jewish martyrs who perished in the Holocaust. Observed throughout the world, it is a day of heartrending significance, the same date as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
For readers who were not with us, here is my D'var Torah in honor of Yom Hashoah:
Today's Torah portion really speaks to me because it addresses the archetypal tragedy of unexplained, irredeemable loss. What is the response to that loss? And what does it mean?
First, let's look at what actually happens in this parashah. On the surface, it is deceptively simple. Yet, scholars have been discussing and debating the portion for centuries.
Aaron and his sons will be honored through ordination as priests, as kohanim. This should be a deeply fulfilling and joyful day for them. Instead, during the ceremony, Aaron's sons Nadam and Abihu bring "alien fire" to the ceremony and then God's fire consumes them. Aaron's response is silence.
Here, I will read the passage for you:
"Now Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the Lord, alien fire, which He had not enjoined upon them. And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus, they died at the instance of the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, 'This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy. And gain glory before all people.
And Aaron was silent.
What does Aaron's silence mean?
Is his silence shock?
Is his silence acceptance of God's decree? The silence of respect?
Is his silence rage?
Is his silence an anguish too great for words? Is his silence speechlessness, that is a loss for words, because language cannot encompass the enormity of his loss?
I believe that the text is suggesting that there are more possibilities--and more power--in silence than in any words when faced with unspeakable loss.
There are many sounds of silence.
As we approach and honor Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we need to reflect on our own response to unspeakable loss, as individuals, and as a community.
In my novel, The White Space Between, I address this very theme: the meaning of silence, the sounds of silence, in the face of unspeakable loss and tragedy, specifically, the Holocaust.
The German writer, Peter Handke, in his beautiful memoir, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, about his mother's suicide, said, "I write out of speechlessness."
I certainly felt a bit of this sentiment when approaching the daunting task of writing a novel about a mother and daughter grappling with the impact of the Holocaust.
My title, The White Space Between, speaks directly to the themes of my book. What is the white space? Well, the white space is literally the space between the letters, the space between the words, the space between the sentences. This white space gives the letters, the words, the sentences, their meaning. Without this white space, there would only be blackness, no form, no shape. A black blank, if you will.
Just as pauses, silence, gives meaning to the notes in music, silence gives meaning to speech, white spaces give meaning to words. They are active, alive.
As the writer Andre Neher says in his fascinating book, The Exile of the Word: From the Silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz, "silence often appears in the Bible in the first person:it has a role, it is active, pregnant.
In my novel, the white space between is also, as Rabbi Avi Weiss says in the epigraph, "the story, the song, the silence."
How did I come to write my novel, The White Space Between? Well, my personal connection to the Holocaust is through my mother-in-law, Brana Hochova, who was a survivor of three concentration camps: Terezin, Mauthausen, and Buchenwald. Like many Holocaust survivors, she did not speak much about her experiences during the war. She wanted to protect her children from the pain and weight of the past. She wanted to go forward. But how can one go forward when effacing the past? Because every time you turn around, there it is.
Sadly, I never knew Brana personally. She died very young, at 52 years old, a legacy of what she went through in the camps. However, she left behind a cassette tape where she spoke about her childhood and her life. Listening to this tape, her voice is very powerful, deep and soft, with a strong Czech accent, the accent of her youth, her identity. Listening to this tape, it was as if Brana was right there in the room with me. This tape filled in some of the white spaces...for me.
In fact, listening to Brana speak, after her death, I was struck by the power of voices, of story, after a long silence, how voices possess enduring life beyond corporeal life: they live on. How voices can be a link, a bridge, between the past and the present, the dead and the living, the lost and the found.
In my novel, Jana Ivanova, a Holocaust survivor also does not speak of her past. She wants to protect her only child, Willow, a marionette-maker and puppeteer, whose puppets become a kind of surrogate family, since she knows so little of her own.
Willow has so many white spaces, so much silence, that she does not even know who her father is. Her mother's struggle to spare her the pain of the past has left her incomplete, longing to find her missing history.
My novel explores the shadow side of silence, of too much white space, which becomes a white-out, an effacement, a kind of hiding, a negation of truth and identity.
Sometimes, one fills in the white space, the silence, with a new history, as the mother, Jana, does in my novel by creating a father for Willow: a French-Canadian man who loved Willow and died before her birth.
My novel explores the consequences of filling white space, of filling silence, with a fabricated recreation of history.
Toward the end of my novel, Willow loses her mother Jana, to a natural death, after a full, complicated, heroic life. Jana goes to her grave with some--but not all--of her secrets and silence. Now that her mother is dead, there are no more chances for Willow to speak to Jana or for Jana to speak to Willow.
"Willow has so many things she wants to ask her mother, questions she has saved up for a lifetime. Part of her feels like she is waiting for her mother to come to her, to speak. The questions, she knows, will remain open-ended. They will be the way she will miss her mother, through what she does not know and can never understand.
Friday, April 3, 2009
What's Coming Up: Mark Your Books
Dear Friends,
Some exciting events are forthcoming for me, and I wanted to get the word out to all of you.
First up, I will be doing my inaugural D'var Torah at Dorshei Emet, aka "The Cool Shul" in Hampstead, Montreal, on April 18th at 10 a.m. with Rabbi Ron Aigen. This D'var will discuss (Lev. 10:1) and my topic will be The Sounds of Silence, or Writing Out of Speechlessness. My D'var will be in honor of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is Tuesday, April 21st. I will be sharing a short excerpt of The White Space Between as well.
Next, on Friday, April 24th, at 4-5 p.m., I'll be participating in "Readings In the Afternoon" at BlueMet International Literary Festival here in Montreal. I'll be reading from The White Space Between and am honored to share the stage with three other interesting authors,Monique Proulx, Eric Siblin, and Andrew Steinmetz. A signing in the festival bookstore will follow. BlueMet will take place at the Delta-Ville Hotel, 777 University Street and our reading will be in the auditorium. The Festival runs from Wednesday April 22nd through Sunday 26th, so stop on by. A.S. Byatt will be reading and have an on-stage interview and other fascinating folks will be participating as well, such as two personal favorites, the brilliant journalist and memoirist, Daniel Mendelsohn, and the fascinating novelist and memoirist, Donald Antrim, both from New York City. Contact eve.pariseau@bluemetropolis.org for more details.
Then I'm heading to the lovely city of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, home of my BFF. There, I will be doing a reading, talk, and signing at the Sabes Jewish Community Center in St. Louis Park. My event will take place on Wednesday, May 6th at 7 p.m.
I am keeping fingers crossed about having a radio interview on Write On! radio in MN and will keep you posted on that.
Later in May, I'm off to the place of my birth, New York City, on May 31st-June 2nd to attend the Jewish Book Council's "Meet the Author" event during their annual Networking Convention. I will present The White Space Between and then attend the schmooze and dinner. I'm honored to be included in the JBC's Author On Tour program on behalf of The White Space Between for their 2009/10 season in the Big Beautiful US.
Look forward to seeing y'all around and about.
Check my website Amisandsbrodoff.com in the news and events section for further details.
-Ami
Some exciting events are forthcoming for me, and I wanted to get the word out to all of you.
First up, I will be doing my inaugural D'var Torah at Dorshei Emet, aka "The Cool Shul" in Hampstead, Montreal, on April 18th at 10 a.m. with Rabbi Ron Aigen. This D'var will discuss (Lev. 10:1) and my topic will be The Sounds of Silence, or Writing Out of Speechlessness. My D'var will be in honor of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is Tuesday, April 21st. I will be sharing a short excerpt of The White Space Between as well.
Next, on Friday, April 24th, at 4-5 p.m., I'll be participating in "Readings In the Afternoon" at BlueMet International Literary Festival here in Montreal. I'll be reading from The White Space Between and am honored to share the stage with three other interesting authors,Monique Proulx, Eric Siblin, and Andrew Steinmetz. A signing in the festival bookstore will follow. BlueMet will take place at the Delta-Ville Hotel, 777 University Street and our reading will be in the auditorium. The Festival runs from Wednesday April 22nd through Sunday 26th, so stop on by. A.S. Byatt will be reading and have an on-stage interview and other fascinating folks will be participating as well, such as two personal favorites, the brilliant journalist and memoirist, Daniel Mendelsohn, and the fascinating novelist and memoirist, Donald Antrim, both from New York City. Contact eve.pariseau@bluemetropolis.org for more details.
Then I'm heading to the lovely city of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, home of my BFF. There, I will be doing a reading, talk, and signing at the Sabes Jewish Community Center in St. Louis Park. My event will take place on Wednesday, May 6th at 7 p.m.
I am keeping fingers crossed about having a radio interview on Write On! radio in MN and will keep you posted on that.
Later in May, I'm off to the place of my birth, New York City, on May 31st-June 2nd to attend the Jewish Book Council's "Meet the Author" event during their annual Networking Convention. I will present The White Space Between and then attend the schmooze and dinner. I'm honored to be included in the JBC's Author On Tour program on behalf of The White Space Between for their 2009/10 season in the Big Beautiful US.
Look forward to seeing y'all around and about.
Check my website Amisandsbrodoff.com in the news and events section for further details.
-Ami
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Birth Day: When...but Where?
Hi Friends,
I recently needed to obtain an "official" copy of my birth certificate. I called each of my parents, neither of whom possesses one of these useful documents anymore, so I resorted to contacting the Vital Stats Bureau...but where?
I asked my 81-year-old Mom, down in Florida, and my eighty-five year-old Dad, down in South Carolina's Uplands.
"New Rochelle," my Mom stated unequivocally.
"New York," my Dad declared, definitively. "Mount Sinai Hospital."
Well, I figured Mom must be right, right? After all, she was the one who carried me above her heart for nine months and went through labor and delivery. So New Rochelle it was.
The website was not helpful, so I placed a call. I needed to send in a written request by post with my name, birth-date, have it notarized, to ensure I was me, and mail it along with a self-addressed-stamped envelope, oh, and the fee for each official copy to a specific address. Done. A tad expensive, what with the notary's fee and the fee for the document, but well worth the price.
A week or two later, I recognized my own stamped, self-addressed envelope. My birth could not be traced...in New Rochelle. Perhaps I had the wrong name! Or the incorrect date.
I called Mom back, peeved. She was fretful.
Very late that night, she phoned me.
"Ami! You were born in New York City at Mount Sinai Hospital. I remember the evening better than some things which happened to me yesterday. I left your Dad and Andy who was just 18 months old home in Larchmont and visited my doctor in New York City. Later that evening, I attended a performance of the opera Othello with my parents at the Met. You were sitting on my sciatic nerve, I was in agony. Then I went into labor.
"At four a.m., my parents took me to Mount Sinai Hospital. You were born at 8 a.m. the next morning!"
So, I have now made my request for my birth certificate for Amy Susan Brodoff (my real name, as opposed to my pen name) on March 18th to New York City's well-organized Bureau of Vital Statistics.
I am waiting. (Hmmm, maybe this is why Othello is one of my favorite plays and the Met one of my special places.)
This little splice-of-life burrowed into my mind. Why? I am fasccinated with the theme of identity. All of my stories and novels wrestle with this timeless journey. Who am I? Where did I come from? What is my purpose? Many of my characters don't have clear answers to these basic questions. Funny how I don't either. Despite the fact that I have living birth parents.
Hopefully, I can report back that I not only know who I am and when I was born, but where as well. (Because if it 'aint New York, there is no there, there.)
A New York City babe. I like that!
I recently needed to obtain an "official" copy of my birth certificate. I called each of my parents, neither of whom possesses one of these useful documents anymore, so I resorted to contacting the Vital Stats Bureau...but where?
I asked my 81-year-old Mom, down in Florida, and my eighty-five year-old Dad, down in South Carolina's Uplands.
"New Rochelle," my Mom stated unequivocally.
"New York," my Dad declared, definitively. "Mount Sinai Hospital."
Well, I figured Mom must be right, right? After all, she was the one who carried me above her heart for nine months and went through labor and delivery. So New Rochelle it was.
The website was not helpful, so I placed a call. I needed to send in a written request by post with my name, birth-date, have it notarized, to ensure I was me, and mail it along with a self-addressed-stamped envelope, oh, and the fee for each official copy to a specific address. Done. A tad expensive, what with the notary's fee and the fee for the document, but well worth the price.
A week or two later, I recognized my own stamped, self-addressed envelope. My birth could not be traced...in New Rochelle. Perhaps I had the wrong name! Or the incorrect date.
I called Mom back, peeved. She was fretful.
Very late that night, she phoned me.
"Ami! You were born in New York City at Mount Sinai Hospital. I remember the evening better than some things which happened to me yesterday. I left your Dad and Andy who was just 18 months old home in Larchmont and visited my doctor in New York City. Later that evening, I attended a performance of the opera Othello with my parents at the Met. You were sitting on my sciatic nerve, I was in agony. Then I went into labor.
"At four a.m., my parents took me to Mount Sinai Hospital. You were born at 8 a.m. the next morning!"
So, I have now made my request for my birth certificate for Amy Susan Brodoff (my real name, as opposed to my pen name) on March 18th to New York City's well-organized Bureau of Vital Statistics.
I am waiting. (Hmmm, maybe this is why Othello is one of my favorite plays and the Met one of my special places.)
This little splice-of-life burrowed into my mind. Why? I am fasccinated with the theme of identity. All of my stories and novels wrestle with this timeless journey. Who am I? Where did I come from? What is my purpose? Many of my characters don't have clear answers to these basic questions. Funny how I don't either. Despite the fact that I have living birth parents.
Hopefully, I can report back that I not only know who I am and when I was born, but where as well. (Because if it 'aint New York, there is no there, there.)
A New York City babe. I like that!
Saturday, March 7, 2009
On My Stack: Nighttable That Is
Books are stacked up on my nighttable as always, and in mini-skyscrapers around the house, not to mention stored on our wall-to-wall bookshelves around and about.
The ones I am reading are usually by my bedside, where I can reach for them after the day's work is done or on those luxurious mornings when I can lounge in bed with a giant mug of fresh coffee and read my way into the day.
I just finished The Outlander, by Canadian author Gil Adamson, a debut novel by an extraordinary writer who also has a volume of stories and book of poetry out as well. The prose is gorgeous, rife with evocative images, yet always just right, fitting to the story. And what a story it is, an adventure. The book is about a young widow at the turn of the century who is on the run after murdering her husband. She is half-mad, wild, and poignant. We are entranced and worried about her as she is relentlessly pursued by her dead husband's two vengeful brothers and a pack of bloodhounds. I don't want to give anything away, but this novel has some of the most erotic, indelible, and powerful sex scenes I have ever read. And writers out there, you know, writing sex is a gift, a challenge. Adamson knows that we bring whomever we are into the bedroom, or in this case, the woods and forest. I am waiting and watching for Adamson's next.
I confess: I read junky mags to relax, a holdover from when my children were small and still watched The Lion King over and over or God help me, Barney,The Wiggles, or the late and beloved Mr. Rodgers. I could snuggle and cuddle with them and have my junky mags to flip through when the sight and sound of Barney sharing and caring was nearly emetic.
My husband Michael's escapist reading is thrillers, but they have to be well-written. This is how I happened to borrow the intriguingly titled Death of a Writer by Michael Collins from his stack.
Anyone who is amused or involved in the constant literary brawl that is going on out there, anyone who has been the victim or the object of writer's envy, will get a kick and a hoot out of this book. It is about author Robert Pendleton, who after his brilliant debut has not published anything "dazzling," and his smarmy nemesis fellow-novelist Allen Horowitz, whose latest autobiographical work has occupied the New York Times bestseller list for a year and has made a fortune. When their paths collide, death seems Pendelton's only option...but he botches his suicide attempt. While convalescing, one of his own early novels which he has hidden in the basement is discovered, and causes a storm of publicity. Pendleton may have his moment yet, unless he is accused of an unsolved murder. Fun stuff written in a muscular, cinematic style.
On my stack, you will also find Aussie Joan London's novel The Good Parents, Elizabeth Strout's linked story collection Olive Kitteridge, and Margot Livesey's latest novel The House on Fortunte Street. I love reading women writers, the best of them, and crave a woman's voice in fiction, which makes me feel I have a dear friend by my side whispering in my ear.
I am just into London's work and am enjoying the story and her limpid, lyrical prose, and will report back on the others in time, but I am well set for my end-of-winter reading.
Friends and fellow booklovers, please comment on what you are reading, I am always eager to hear about wonderful books.
-Ami
The ones I am reading are usually by my bedside, where I can reach for them after the day's work is done or on those luxurious mornings when I can lounge in bed with a giant mug of fresh coffee and read my way into the day.
I just finished The Outlander, by Canadian author Gil Adamson, a debut novel by an extraordinary writer who also has a volume of stories and book of poetry out as well. The prose is gorgeous, rife with evocative images, yet always just right, fitting to the story. And what a story it is, an adventure. The book is about a young widow at the turn of the century who is on the run after murdering her husband. She is half-mad, wild, and poignant. We are entranced and worried about her as she is relentlessly pursued by her dead husband's two vengeful brothers and a pack of bloodhounds. I don't want to give anything away, but this novel has some of the most erotic, indelible, and powerful sex scenes I have ever read. And writers out there, you know, writing sex is a gift, a challenge. Adamson knows that we bring whomever we are into the bedroom, or in this case, the woods and forest. I am waiting and watching for Adamson's next.
I confess: I read junky mags to relax, a holdover from when my children were small and still watched The Lion King over and over or God help me, Barney,The Wiggles, or the late and beloved Mr. Rodgers. I could snuggle and cuddle with them and have my junky mags to flip through when the sight and sound of Barney sharing and caring was nearly emetic.
My husband Michael's escapist reading is thrillers, but they have to be well-written. This is how I happened to borrow the intriguingly titled Death of a Writer by Michael Collins from his stack.
Anyone who is amused or involved in the constant literary brawl that is going on out there, anyone who has been the victim or the object of writer's envy, will get a kick and a hoot out of this book. It is about author Robert Pendleton, who after his brilliant debut has not published anything "dazzling," and his smarmy nemesis fellow-novelist Allen Horowitz, whose latest autobiographical work has occupied the New York Times bestseller list for a year and has made a fortune. When their paths collide, death seems Pendelton's only option...but he botches his suicide attempt. While convalescing, one of his own early novels which he has hidden in the basement is discovered, and causes a storm of publicity. Pendleton may have his moment yet, unless he is accused of an unsolved murder. Fun stuff written in a muscular, cinematic style.
On my stack, you will also find Aussie Joan London's novel The Good Parents, Elizabeth Strout's linked story collection Olive Kitteridge, and Margot Livesey's latest novel The House on Fortunte Street. I love reading women writers, the best of them, and crave a woman's voice in fiction, which makes me feel I have a dear friend by my side whispering in my ear.
I am just into London's work and am enjoying the story and her limpid, lyrical prose, and will report back on the others in time, but I am well set for my end-of-winter reading.
Friends and fellow booklovers, please comment on what you are reading, I am always eager to hear about wonderful books.
-Ami
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