by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 17, 2008 | Pam Houston |
“I wonder what it would be like,” she said to me on one of those days that make you feel that you have chosen the right profession, “if I could once and for all get my mother out of my head.” “Picture it,” I told her. “Tell...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 15, 2008 | craft of writing, details, novels, reading |
Just as Home, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award in Fiction, has been called a companion to Gilead, this post is a companion to yesterday’s. Prompted by comments, I wanted to add that if you enjoyed Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson’s first novel,...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 14, 2008 | novels, reviews, shapes |
For anyone who enjoyed Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s second novel, which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, you will love her new novel, Home. For she has just crossed town, so to speak, and turned around to tell us the story from a different porch. On...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 11, 2008 | truth |
“That’s not what she means,” I said. “She means, like, we are what’s happened to us. So if you take away what’s happened to us, then, you know…Well, who would you be?” “I’d be someone different.”...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 8, 2008 | Dani Shapiro, memoir, novels, truth |
Playing with Fire was Dani Shapiro’s first novel. It was published in 1989. It begins, “There are many versions to this story…” And indeed, nine years later, the author published another version–“the true story,” the...
