Bright Shards of Someplace Else
Twenty years ago, George Dawes Green wrote a book entitled The Juror about a young mother (Annie) chosen for jury duty for a high-profile murder trial of an organized crime mob boss. The story is filled with suspense and tension with the creepiest, most memorable part involving Annie’s best friend, Juliet – a strong, tough, and protective character – the type of person we all want watching our back. Read more 
Florence Gordon
It was a joy to be alone. It was fun to play the social role, it was fun to play the old lion at Town Hall, but it was far, far better to be alone again.
Florence Gordon is a 75-year old feminist writer living in New York City when her family descends upon her quiet orderly life. Her son, Daniel and his wife, Janine along with their 19-year old daughter, Emily are visiting for a few months while Janine completes a fellowship at Columbia University. Nestled into a sublet close to Florence on the Upper West Side, Daniel (a Seattle police officer) and Janine (a psychologist) along with Emily, a college sophomore who has taken a semester off from Oberlin College embark upon a journey where the words spoken between them are as important as what’s not said. Read more
“The Bridge of Sighs”
In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice….To see a life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama’s enemy.
Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls wrote the Bridge of Sighs nearly a decade ago although the book is timeless in the classic Russo style of writing about life in a small town in upstate New York. A 640-page novel divided into 24 chapters (of which 23 are named), the Bridge of Sighs is primarily the story of Louis C. Lynch (also known as Lucy), a 60-year old business owner who has lived his whole life in Thomaston, New York – a small industrial town described as a trifecta of “stupidity, ignorance, and violence” and not unlike the real Johnston or Gloversville in New York which were known for their tanneries and glove making industries. Read more
The Light Between Oceans
The oceans never stop. They know no beginning or end. The wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island, to make a point….
Using the two oceans – the Indian Ocean and the Great Southern Ocean – as a metaphor for two families whose lives blend and collide, M.L. Stedman tells the story of the Sherbourne’s and the Roennfeldt’s in a book entitled The Light Between Oceans.
Published in 2012, the 340 page novel is divided into three parts (Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3 ) and 37 chapters. A New York Times bestseller, The Light Between Oceans is also being made into a film that will be released in September, 2016. Read more
Imagine Me Gone
So like a cripple I long for what others don’t notice they have: ordinary meaning.
Imagine Me Gone is the very emotional story of a family living with mental illness during the later half of the 20th century (1960’s, 70’s. 80’s, and 90’s). The story begins in 1962 in London. A young American woman named Margaret is working at a library in the suburbs when she meets John – “a showman when he’s on, capable of great largesse” – at a a party. Eighteen months later, Margaret and John become engaged but after Margaret returns from visiting her family in Massachusetts over the holidays, she wonders whether they will marry after she learns that John is in a psychiatric hospital with what is described as an “imbalance.” Unsure of what this really means, Margaret remains committed to John and helps him return to his former self although in retrospect years later she realizes “we live among the dead until we join them.” Read more
The Third Plate
The Third Plate is one of those books that fall into the category of “if I read only one book this year, I need to read this.” Written by Dan Barber, the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill, a restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, also a restaurant located within the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture (a four season farm and education center) in Pocantico Hills, New York, The Third Plate is one of the most comprehensive and interesting books linking chefs to suppliers to farmers and producers to seed breeders. Sounds dry? It isn’t. In fact, the book is a page turner. Think Anthony Boudain:Parts Unknown meets Michael Pollan for a four course meal after absorbing the Farmer’s Almanac and telling everyone else in the restaurant about all the magnificent places they’ve visited, the food they’ve tasted, and how that food was grown. Read more
The Homemade Vegan Pantry
Join the homemade revolution.
One of the most fantastic aspects of adopting a plant-based diet is being part of a rapidly growing community that introduces new products nearly every day along with cookbooks on how to make delicious plant-based food. Years ago, just a few vegan cookbooks lined a shelf at the local bookstore but today the shelves are filled with vegan cookbooks – a testament to the growing popularity of this wholesome, nutritious diet. Read more
“The Emerald Light In The Air”
I’m not of this world.
The Emerald Light In The Air is a collection of short stories written by Donald Antrim that were originally published in the New Yorker Magazine. If you’ve never read Antrim’s work before (and, even if you have), it’s helpful to know a few things about him because his stories often mirror parts of his life.
Born in 1958, Antrim was raised in the south by an alcoholic seamstress mother and a father (a scholar of TS Eliot) who married and divorced twice. Moved from place to place, Antrim’s childhood was anything but idealic although boarding school and college (he graduated from Brown) paved the way to a writing career. Read more
“Orphan #8”
Did anyone know what was going on there? Of course they did. They must have.
Kim van Alkemade, a writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania at Shippensburg spent about five years researching and writing her first novel – Orphan #8, the story of Rachel Rabinowitz, a 4-year old orphan sent to live in the Hebrew Infant Home in New York City in 1919. While there, Rachel becomes part of a medical research study in which healthy children (who were dehumanized by being assigned numbers) are x-rayed to see if radiation could provide an alternative to the surgical removal of tonsils. The doctor conducting the study – Dr. Mildred Solomon – is a recent graduate of the male dominated medical school system and an ambitious young doctor who did not adequately weigh the risks or consider the rights of children without a voice. Read more
“The Afterlife”
People are fond of saying that the truth will make you free. But what happens when the truth is not one simple, brutal thing?
Personal memoirs about growing up with less than suitable parents, and particularly mothers – provide readers a glimpse into a world that managed to produce some of the most talented contemporary writers in this country while supporting the argument that nature wins over nurture but not without the long-lasting effects of childhood. Read more
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