this woman’s work

This month’s author is Donna Jo Napoli because I dearly love her inspired retelling of fairy tales. She’s an interesting woman, too. When I was looking for pictures of her (I end up not featuring a lot of author’s whose pictures are unavailable or unusable), I read some interviews and found out that she’s pretty fascinating.

I recently read her book Breath, which tells the Pied Piper story and explains the events by poisoning Hamelin with ergot. It’s a horrific read, to tell you the truth and I’d be surprised to hear that they’re teaching it in any middle schools. That’s why I chose the quote for her that I did. I liked it, in any case, although it was really disturbing.

I wanted it to be E. H. Young but I can’t find any pictures of her. I’m mentioning her here so you can think about reading her, especially her prize-winning novel Miss Mole.

Instead I’m featuring Celia Fremlin who wrote a mystery about a new mother. In The Hours Before Dawn, Louise Henderson is the exhausted mother to a crying, sleepless baby and two little girls. I read it for the first time when Noah was a toddler and the description of sleeplessness absolutely resonated with me. I also thought her take on 1960s domesticity was pretty funny. In short, it’s a great housewife story and a fun mystery.

I couldn’t find an interview quote so I used a bit from the book instead.

It’s high time I introduced this month’s featured author. Unfortunately, there’s not much in English about her on the web so I have no links for you other than the reading group guide linked below.

I discovered Marianne Fredricksson by accident at Half-Price Books in the clearance section. Finding unexpected treasures like this is hands down the best thing about having a self-imposed limit of not more than $2 for any book not research related (for homeschooling). Anyway, the cover of Simon’s Family is unbelievably cheesy (check out the link) but I got it because the subtitle was “a novel of mother’s and sons” and also because Simon is the #1 name on my boy’s list. (Brett has a different #1 but I’m working on him.) For a buck, I figured it was worth the risk. I never would have bought it had I seen it full-price because sometimes with a cover this godawful, it’s hard to remember the old adage about not judging a book by it.

Well, clearly this book was meant to drop into my hands because not only is it about mothers and sons, it’s also about adoption and Judaism and it was thought-provoking, moving, and an absolutely great read. I’ve since read one of her other novels and am on a hunt for the third one translated into English (interlibrary loan won’t do it; I must own it). Her style reminds me of an impressive art house chick flicks such as Antonia’s Line only in book form and less silly. And she also reminds me a little of Milan Kundera.

Katherine Paterson author of many books including the sublime, tear-jerker Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved, (which I didn’t like until I was a grown-up) will be our featured author for September.

Our basement flooded this weekend for the first time since we’ve lived here. I lost one shelf of books (just a shelf, not the whole bookcase) and all of the carpet in the playroom. And the couch cushions. Well, at least it gives us an excuse to go ahead and buy a new carpet. A friend of mine had a major flood once in which she lost a valuable book collection. She said that this helped her let go of her materialism. Perhaps I didn’t lose enough because it’s just made me grouchy and got me craving a trip to the bookstore.

Noah also got bunk beds on Friday (before we realized that our budget for the upcoming month would also need to include flood damage repair). He was sitting in the top bunk reading a book and he said, “Don’t I look like such a big boy?” Yes, indeed he does. He has carefully arranged the top of his new dresser to include a picture of Peanut (in a heart-shaped frame), his Spiderman bobblehead, a glass dragon from Grandma, and his sunglasses because they look, he says, particularly “like a thing a big boy would have.”

I’m fighting a bad case of disgruntlement and am thinking that I could use a week or month away from it all. This seems unlikely. I will have to be content with barking at my family and gazing morosely out windows. Sometimes this works. More often it doesn’t. Oh well, I’ll just ride it out.

Brett is very patient and has been giving me fond pats and tilting his head sympathetically when I scowl at him. He cleaned the whole basement up himself. An added bonus to being married to him is that he likes everyone to get out of his way when it comes to big jobs such as cleaning up after a flood. So Noah and I went to my mom’s and watched reruns of Electric Company. When we came home, Brett had cut up the entire carpet and hauled it piece by piece to the curb and had mopped up everything. He is a truly lovely man. Now he has reason to be disgruntled and yet he allows me the great privilege of moping. Isn’t he nice?

I’m pretty sure this is still adoption anxiety and once my system accustoms itself to the increased stress level, it’ll all be just fine.

I’ve had Julia Glass up for two months and I’m determined to get a new featured author up for tomorrow. My dilemma is that several of my favorite authors don’t have photos and several more present a challenge to find quotes. But know, dear reader, that I am working on it.

Julia Glass!

Brett got me Three Junes for Mother’s Day and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read in my entire life — and that’s saying something. But wait, it gets better!

In a profile from New York Metro

“Virginia Woolf was wrong,”Julia Glass says, grinning as she ushers me into her ground-floor Greenwich Village apartment. “You do not need a room of your own to write.”

Glass’s cheerfully disordered life in this less-than-700-square-foot space — a closet-size kitchen and two small rooms she shares with photographer Dennis Cowley and their two young sons — is a reproach to all those New Yorkers who fantasize that they, too, could write the Great American Novel if only they had free time, an Aeron chair, and no distractions.

Here at her kitchen table, between editing corporate brochures and writing magazine articles on pets and parenting, Glass, 46, wrote her first novel, Three Junes, a gorgeously crafted saga set in Scotland, Greece, Manhattan, and the Hamptons. She got a five-figure advance from Pantheon, a respectable 26,500 first printing, and glowing reviews upon publication last spring but drew minimal media notice. “I gave a reading at a bookstore in Marin County and two people turned up,” says Glass. “I did separate events with Ann Packer and Richard Russo. I felt like the opening band for a rock star.”

So it was a stunning upset in the literary world in late November when Glass won the writer’s equivalent of the Best Actor Oscar — the National Book Award for fiction — which she jubilantly dedicated in her acceptance speech to “late bloomers.”

She’s my inspiration. Go buy her book; you’ll fall in love with Fenno, too, I promise.

And from