So much of life feels like a performance. Even grieving, when it means standing on a stage and describing to pews of people the contours of that most intimate relationship — between yourself and the woman whose body created you, whose love sustained you, and whose new absence empties you, though you hope for only [...]
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And every small tragedy is also large. The anniversary of the September eleventh attacks was made somehow more personal this year. September tenth is my niece Michel’s birthday. She would have been twenty-three. Her family and friends gathered at my sister’s house to celebrate her life. For a few hours, all the media stories about [...] I have been puzzling for months over the primary critique of my novel that I received from the editor who is reading it — that my protagonist lives in her own head too much. My problem isn’t one of understanding but of experience. To me, the sixteen-year-old who observes and broods and ponders and wonders [...] I’ve been reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion again, and she writes about how we turn to what we know to cope in times of grief. I’ve been reading about grief in literature (my next post on that will be coming soon) and I’ve been writing. And writing and writing. There was [...] As long as we have been human, we have been contemplating mortality, trying to find meaning in life, and suffering in our grief. I know I will never understand Michel’s death, so I am trying to find some solace in the continuity of human emotion. People mourned their dead thousands years ago as they mourn [...] |
My Opium Den
After some thinking, I realized why I didn't finish this book (even as I racked up late fees from the library): I found the subject matter, the history of the region of England called Sunderland, interesting, but there was nothing about the...
Lovely art by Camilla D'Errico (who should be listed as a co-author) provide mood and texture for this story of a troubled young girl whose fantasy life becomes a bit too real when she visits a website called Make5wishes.com. The authors ar...
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