Reading With Robin at Word For Word at Bryant Park

Bryant Park, located right behind the New York Public Library, hosts a fabulous literary series each summer. Word For Word features authors in conversation about their works on Wednesdays during the lunch hour, and a few weeks ago I saw a really terrific program.

Robin Kall, who hosts a radio program Reading With Robin, hosted four authors talking about Family Drama in Fiction.

Kall, Dubow, Genova, Hughes, Thomas

Charles Dubow, who wrote Indiscretion, a book I really liked, is back with Girl in the Moonlight, a love story about "a first love that lasts a bit too long." It has compelling characters, and he said "the moral of the story resonates with me, hopefully with you too."

Lisa Genova, whose novel Still Alice, was recently made into a heartbreaking movie that won the Oscar for Julianne Moore, is back with Inside the O'Briens about a family dealing with the diagnosis of Huntington's Disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disease that is passed on genetically. She says it is about "how to find hope in a hopeless situation." I read it and it is amazing. (My review is here.)

Mary Beth Hughes' The Loved Ones is "essentially a story about a marriage." Set in 1969-70, a couple who lost their son two years ago are trying to find their way back to each other amidst problems with their 13 year-old daughter, and a brother who is trying to involve them in an embezzlement scheme.

Matthew Thomas' We Are Not Ourselves was on my list of The Most Compelling Books of 2014, and as Robin stated "is destined to be a classic." His story is about a Irish immigrant's daughter born in the 1940's who aspires to become middle class and achieve the American dream. He says it's about "how to deal with life with grace." (My review here.)

Kall asked some great questions of the group, including asking what kind of eavesdropping they did as part of their writing. Genova is from a large Italian family (she is the 26th grandchild!), a group she called "loud and boisterous", so there were plenty of opportunities as a child to listen.

Thomas declared that he was "an inveterate eavesdropper", claiming that as a writer he is always listening to the story being told off to the side.

Hughes's father is one of 12 children and she has 72 first cousins, so she always was surrounded by people talking. Now that she is a writer, her aunt is always telling her that she "has a lot of stories."

Dubow comes from a small family, and he was born with a stutter, so always listened much more than he talked.

Kall then asked what determined the time period setting of their novels, which was a good question I hadn't heard much before.  Thomas said he told a "story of time and place." It needed context, and called it a historical novel, not one "shot through with cell phones."

Hughes said that setting was very important to her story, calling it "Mad Men-esque" in 1969-70 when women's consciousness groups were beginning, and what that meant to the teenage daughter.

Genova's novel had to be set after 1993, when the gene that causes Huntington's was isolated. The fact that genetic testing is available is a key plot point in Inside the O'Briens.

Dubow needed to set his novel at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, when AIDS shaming was prevalent, as that is important to his plot as well.

When Kall asked if any topics were off-limits, Genova burst out with "Hockey. I'm not writing about hockey", which elicited chuckles from the audience.

Thomas said "this sounds like a challenge", then said he would "stay away from something that was unnecessarily painful to others." Dubow said he would not write about something he knew nothing about, while Hughes would "find it difficult to write about dance."

Kall said that some of her favorite family drama authors are Jonathan Tropper and Phillip Roth and asked the authors to name some of the favorites. Hughes loves Penelope Fitzgerald, saying that Blue Flower and Gate of Angels were favorites.

Thomas believes that everything is family drama, and called out Alice McDermott (one of my favorites) as well as the Russians, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Genova liked All The Light We Cannot See, last year's Pulitzer Prize winner, and Dubow also cited the Russians, along with William Faulkner and James Salter's The Light Years.

Kall closed with a fantastic question- "What is the hope for your families in your book?" Hughes has great hope for her character Lily, " a beautiful spirit with great faith."  Thomas hopes that his character Eileen has grandchildren and learns to "feel the joy and forget the things that drove her and that she is more present in the moment."

Genova hops that her characters, who face chronic health issues can "be present to love, and the feel the gratitude of the joy of today.

Robin Kall was a wonderful moderator and this was one of the best Word For Word events I have attended. The rest of the summer schedule is here.

You can follow Robin Kall here.

Summer Reads 2015

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Summer is right around the corner (isn’t it?), and that means it’s time to search out books for the beach, lake, pool deck, summer cottage or back porch. Click on the title below each book to get more information.

First up, there are the so-called beach reads. The Fifty Shades of Grey fans may have to wait for the next installment Grey, but in the meantime they may want to check out the latest chapter in Jackie Collins’ ‘Lucky’ series, titled The Santangelos. Once again she blends a cocktail of sex, violence, and general mayhem amongst Lucky and her extended family. It’s a real page-turner, and there are graphic sex scenes, so fair warning. 

The Santangelos

Dorothea Benton Frank returns to the Lowcountry of South Carolina for her summer novel, All The Single Ladies, the story of a nurse caring for a patient who becomes good friends with her patient’s best friends. There’s lots of female bonding here, and this is aimed at women who have lived life, and have to deal with adult children, and mothers and grandmothers too. 

All The Single Ladies

Shelley Noble’s novel has an actual beach setting. In her novel Whisper Beach, Vanessa left her home there at age seventeen when she became pregnant. Fifteen years later, she returns home for a funeral, and ends up staying for awhile to help a old friend with her failing restaurant. This one is also about friendship, lost love and coming home. 

Whisper Beach

If fast-paced thrillers are more your style, Jessica Knoll’s novel Luckiest Girl Alive has been favorably compared to Gone Girl. Ani FaNelli has a glamorous job, a handsome, wealthy fiance, and the world on a string. But a secret from her past has threatened to derail all that she has worked for. Critics have been praising this debut novel from Knoll, a Hobart and William Smith Colleges graduate. 

Luckiest Girl Alive

Author Charles Dubow's followup to his novel Indiscretion is Girl In The Moonlight, about Wylie, a young man who has been enchanted by Cesca, a wild, spirited, beautiful young woman. Cesura toys with Wylie over the years, destroying him in the process for any other woman. Their passionate relationship over the years takes the reader from the East Hamptons to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Paris and Barcelona. 

Girl In The Moonlight

Judy Blume, best known for her iconic children’s books like Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? and Forever, has written an adult novel this year, In The Unlikely Event. Taking place in Elizabeth, New Jersey, it tells the story of Miri, who returns to her hometown thirty-five years after a series of plane crashes occurred there (which actually happened). We see how all these years later, people in the town are still haunted by the plane crashes, and Blume brings to vivid life the feelings of growing up in that place at that time in history. 

In The Unlikely Event

If you prefer to read non-fiction, Los Angeles Times reporter Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside- A True Story of Murder in America takes a look at murder in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has almost one murder every day, and many of them go unsolved because no one seems to care about the victims. 

Ghettoside

Leovy writes about the case of Bryant Tennelle, a young black man who was murdered and doomed to be an unsolved and forgotten homicide until detective John Skaggs caught the case. Skaggs doggedly pursued justice for Tennelle, and by telling this story Levy shares how the epidemic of young black men killing each other exists and how it could be stopped. 

Joseph J. Ellis, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Founding Brothers, returns with The Quartet- Orchestrating The Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 about the four men- George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison- who, after the American Revolution, worked to draft the Bill of Rights and ensure that the states would accept the powers of the federal government in order to create a strong national union. 

The Quartet

Actress Kate Mulgrew has been working on TV for over thirty years, best known as Mary Ryan on the ABC soap Ryan’s Hope, as the first female captain of a Starfleet vessel on Star Trek-Voyager and can currently be seen as tough prison inmate Red on Orange Is The New Black, and she recounts her life’s story in the brilliantly written memoir Born With Teeth. It’s honest and fascinating, but fans looking for gossip will be disappointed. 

Born With Teeth

Whatever you read this summer, I hope you enjoy it.

Short & Sweet: Indiscretion by Charles Dubow

I read so many books that I don't have time to post a full review for each one. To that, I will post shorter reviews on books titled "Short & Sweet". This is my first post.

Book: Indiscretion by Charles Dubow
Publisher: William Morrow, ISBN 978-0-062201065
Trade Paperback, $14.99, 400 pages

Genre: Literary Fiction

Plot: Harry and Maddy are a happily married middle-aged couple with a young son who has health issues. Harry is a famous author, Maddy the party hostess and friend everyone adores. They have a social circle that includes Walter, a lonely man who is our narrator. A beautiful young woman named Claire enters their lives and they take her under their wing, and all is well until their happy little world is shattered by an indiscretion.

The Short & Sweet: Most of these type of  novels are about the woman wronged, but I found this look at adultery from the male perspective intriguing. Walter, the friend, is the narrator and given that this takes place mostly on a summer place in the Hamptons and is about an obsessive love affair, it echoes The Great Gatsby. 
The characters are interesting, especially Maddy, and the plot keeps the reader invested in the story. The last few chapters are incredibly sad  and devastating, and I found myself impressed with Dubrow's ability to move the reader so deeply in his debut novel. There are some explicit (and well written) sex scenes, so if that offends you, this book may not be for you.

rating 4 of 5