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...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 28, 2008 | reviews, shapes, truth |
The Lucky Ones is Rachel Cusk’s fifth book. In it, there is a Contents page, which announces five sections. Each section stands by itself. There is a passing reference in each section to at least one character in another section. With a lovely circularity,...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 25, 2008 | Pam Houston, stories, truth |
Pam Houston is one of my all-time favorite writers. She is a master at getting it out of her head and onto the page. Take for example this bit of dialogue from her novel, Sight Hound: “You know,” she said, “I’m not going to be one of those...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 23, 2008 | memory, shapes, truth |
Charles Frazier’s second book,Thirteen Moons, is narrated by Will Cooper, who has a friend named Bear, a Cherokee Indian chief. “I cannot decide whether it is an illness or a sin, the need to write things down and fix the flowing world in one rigid form. ...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 8, 2008 | reviews, shapes, truth |
Rachel Cusk’s fourth book is a memoir, A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother. My favorite line, because of the unwritten premise, comes in the Introduction, where she writes, “…so it would be a contradiction to write a book about motherhood...
