The Nostalgia of Coming Home When Everything’s Changed

Book review: Bettyville, by George Hodgman (Amazon / Book Depository) My friends worry that I am falling into a hole here, that this time away is really giving up, running away. Since I lost my job, I don’t know quite who it is I am now. Suddenly I feel older. In New York, my closet... Continue Reading →

A “Family Album” of Emotional, Complicated Relationships

Book review: True Crimes, by Kathryn Harrison Amazon I see the bravado required to be funny and beguiling when what you really are is old and aching and breathless from congestive heart failure, when what you really are is afraid. Kathryn Harrison is such a tricky author. A writer of quietly powerful, serious talents, her... Continue Reading →

Joan Didion and the Blues

Book review: Blue Nights, by Joan Didion (Amazon / Book Depository) ...there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue...suddenly summer seems near, a possibility, even a promise... you find yourself swimming in the color blue: the actual light is blue, and over... Continue Reading →

The Complicated Necessity of Solitude

Book review: Journal of a Solitude, by May Sarton (Amazon / Book Depository) I am way outside somewhere in the wilderness. And it has been a long time of being in the wilderness. Writer May Sarton retreated to a cottage in New Hampshire for one year, where she holed up and wrote and confronted the seasons, both of the... Continue Reading →

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