by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Mar 24, 2011 | continuous life, craft of writing, life, novels, time, truth |
Each chapter of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad can stand alone as a story, but united, these chapters took my breath away. I got chills as I discovered yet another connection between them: Characters who age and reappear. Younger selves revealed....
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Mar 20, 2011 | craft of writing, novels |
In her selected shorts interview, Jennifer Egan talked about how, years ago, she abandoned a story because she couldn’t find any way to rein in the material. Well, in A Visit From the Goon Squad, Egan is the master of compression. In Chapter 1, she creates a...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Mar 16, 2011 | life, novels, time |
As some of you may know from my recent post, last week, Jennifer Egan’s book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. This morning it was also long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. A Visit From the Goon Squad is...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Mar 8, 2011 | accumulation, first novels, mfa, place, reading |
Roswell, Georgia, a small city rich in history on the north side of Atlanta, chose Robin Oliveira’s first novel, My Name is Mary Sutter, as their Sixth Annual Roswell Reads Selection. At a reception for Robin Friday night, which included delicious gluten-free...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Feb 15, 2011 | novels, reviews |
What a great name for a little boy. And for the title of Summer Wood’s second novel, out today from Bloomsbury [no spoilers]. Chapter One begins with these two sentences: It was the middle of the afternoon, January 1969, and a half-hearted rain dampened San...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Dec 28, 2010 | first novels, my writing, reviews |
The Winter issue of Contrary is live, and there’s lots to celebrate. First, Writer’s Digest voted Contrary one of the 50 Best Online Literary Markets. Second, my story, “The Empty Armchair,” published in the Autumn 2009 issue, was one of the...
