Author: Mary McCarthy
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480441252
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
DIVDIVTracing her moral struggles to the day she accidentally took a sip of water before her Communion—a mortal sin—Mary McCarthy gives us eight funny and heartrending essays about the illusive and redemptive nature of memory/divDIV “During the course of writing this, I’ve often wished that I were writing fiction.”/divDIV Originally published in large part as standalone essays in the New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, Mary McCarthy’s acclaimed memoir begins with her recollections of a happy childhood cut tragically short by the death of her parents during the influenza epidemic of 1918./divDIV Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. One of four children, she suffered abuse at the hands of her great-aunt and uncle until she moved to Seattle to be raised by her maternal grandparents. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance./divDIV In Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, McCarthy pays homage to the past and creates hope for the future. Reminiscent of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, this is a funny, honest, and unsparing account blessed with the holy sacraments of forgiveness, love, and redemption./divDIV This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate./div/div
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
Author: Mary McCarthy
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480441252
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
DIVDIVTracing her moral struggles to the day she accidentally took a sip of water before her Communion—a mortal sin—Mary McCarthy gives us eight funny and heartrending essays about the illusive and redemptive nature of memory/divDIV “During the course of writing this, I’ve often wished that I were writing fiction.”/divDIV Originally published in large part as standalone essays in the New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, Mary McCarthy’s acclaimed memoir begins with her recollections of a happy childhood cut tragically short by the death of her parents during the influenza epidemic of 1918./divDIV Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. One of four children, she suffered abuse at the hands of her great-aunt and uncle until she moved to Seattle to be raised by her maternal grandparents. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance./divDIV In Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, McCarthy pays homage to the past and creates hope for the future. Reminiscent of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, this is a funny, honest, and unsparing account blessed with the holy sacraments of forgiveness, love, and redemption./divDIV This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate./div/div
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480441252
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
DIVDIVTracing her moral struggles to the day she accidentally took a sip of water before her Communion—a mortal sin—Mary McCarthy gives us eight funny and heartrending essays about the illusive and redemptive nature of memory/divDIV “During the course of writing this, I’ve often wished that I were writing fiction.”/divDIV Originally published in large part as standalone essays in the New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, Mary McCarthy’s acclaimed memoir begins with her recollections of a happy childhood cut tragically short by the death of her parents during the influenza epidemic of 1918./divDIV Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. One of four children, she suffered abuse at the hands of her great-aunt and uncle until she moved to Seattle to be raised by her maternal grandparents. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance./divDIV In Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, McCarthy pays homage to the past and creates hope for the future. Reminiscent of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, this is a funny, honest, and unsparing account blessed with the holy sacraments of forgiveness, love, and redemption./divDIV This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate./div/div
Mary McCarthy's Collected Memoirs
Author: Mary McCarthy
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480465976
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 695
Book Description
Three candid, affecting memoirs by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Group, including a National Book Award finalist. In Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Mary McCarthy begins with her recollections of a happy childhood cut tragically short by the death of her parents during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance. How I Grew is McCarthy’s intensely personal autobiography of her life from age thirteen to twenty-one. With detail driven by an almost astonishing memory recall, the author gives us a masterful account of these formative years. From her wild adolescence—including losing her virginity at fourteen—through her eventual escape to Vassar, the bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic chronicles her relationships with family, friends, lovers, and the teachers who would influence her writing career. And Intellectual Memoirs opens with McCarthy as a married twenty-four-year-old Communist and critic. She’s disciplined, dedicated, and sexually experimental: At one point she realizes that in twenty-four hours she “had slept with three different men.” Over the course of three years, she will have had two husbands, the second being the esteemed, much older critic Edmund Wilson. It is Wilson who becomes McCarthy’s mentor and muse, urging her to try her hand at fiction. Intellectual Memoirs is a vivid snapshot of a distinctive place and time—New York in the late 1930s—and the forces that shaped Mary McCarthy’s life as a woman and a writer.
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480465976
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 695
Book Description
Three candid, affecting memoirs by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Group, including a National Book Award finalist. In Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Mary McCarthy begins with her recollections of a happy childhood cut tragically short by the death of her parents during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Tempering memory with invention, McCarthy describes how, orphaned at six, she spent much of her childhood shuttled between two sets of grandparents and three religions—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. Early on, McCarthy lets the reader in on her secret: The chapter you just read may not be wholly reliable—facts have been distilled through the hazy lens of time and distance. How I Grew is McCarthy’s intensely personal autobiography of her life from age thirteen to twenty-one. With detail driven by an almost astonishing memory recall, the author gives us a masterful account of these formative years. From her wild adolescence—including losing her virginity at fourteen—through her eventual escape to Vassar, the bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic chronicles her relationships with family, friends, lovers, and the teachers who would influence her writing career. And Intellectual Memoirs opens with McCarthy as a married twenty-four-year-old Communist and critic. She’s disciplined, dedicated, and sexually experimental: At one point she realizes that in twenty-four hours she “had slept with three different men.” Over the course of three years, she will have had two husbands, the second being the esteemed, much older critic Edmund Wilson. It is Wilson who becomes McCarthy’s mentor and muse, urging her to try her hand at fiction. Intellectual Memoirs is a vivid snapshot of a distinctive place and time—New York in the late 1930s—and the forces that shaped Mary McCarthy’s life as a woman and a writer.
Cast a Cold Eye
Author: Mary McCarthy
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480438324
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
Seven “remarkable” stories from the bestselling author of The Group (The New York Times). Two American tourists find themselves seriously befuddled by their unorthodox Italian guide. A hospitalized graduate student turns the sounds of pain and despair into music. A family is tragically taken apart, and then reformed, by a deadly outbreak of influenza. The short fiction in this collection, some of it autobiographical in inspiration, reflects both the adept, witty storytelling and the insightful social commentary of New York Times–bestselling author Mary McCarthy. A National Book Award finalist known for such novels as Birds in America and The Groves of Academe—as well as memoir (Memories of a Catholic Girlhood) and travel writing (Venice Observed)—McCarthy shows in Cast a Cold Eye why she has been called “a brilliant writer with a rare talent for corrosive satire” (The Atlantic Monthly). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480438324
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
Seven “remarkable” stories from the bestselling author of The Group (The New York Times). Two American tourists find themselves seriously befuddled by their unorthodox Italian guide. A hospitalized graduate student turns the sounds of pain and despair into music. A family is tragically taken apart, and then reformed, by a deadly outbreak of influenza. The short fiction in this collection, some of it autobiographical in inspiration, reflects both the adept, witty storytelling and the insightful social commentary of New York Times–bestselling author Mary McCarthy. A National Book Award finalist known for such novels as Birds in America and The Groves of Academe—as well as memoir (Memories of a Catholic Girlhood) and travel writing (Venice Observed)—McCarthy shows in Cast a Cold Eye why she has been called “a brilliant writer with a rare talent for corrosive satire” (The Atlantic Monthly). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.
How I Grew
Author: Mary McCarthy
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480441112
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
DIVDIVThe author of The Group, the groundbreaking bestseller and 1964 National Book Award finalist that shaped a generation of women, brings reminiscences of her girlhood to this intimate and illuminating memoir/divDIV How I Grew is Mary McCarthy’s intensely personal autobiography of her life from age thirteen to twenty-one./divDIV Orphaned at six, McCarthy was raised by her maternal grandparents in Seattle, Washington. Although her official birthdate is in 1912, it wasn’t until she turned thirteen that, in McCarthy’s own words, she was “born as a mind.” With detail driven by an almost astonishing memory recall, McCarthy gives us a masterful account of these formative years. From her wild adolescence—including losing her virginity at fourteen—through her eventual escape to Vassar, the bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic chronicles her relationships with family, friends, lovers, and the teachers who would influence her writing career./divDIV Filled with McCarthy’s penetrating insights and trenchant wit, this is an unblinkingly honest and fearless self-portrait of a young woman coming of age—and the perfect companion to McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood./divDIV This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate./divDIV/div/div
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480441112
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
DIVDIVThe author of The Group, the groundbreaking bestseller and 1964 National Book Award finalist that shaped a generation of women, brings reminiscences of her girlhood to this intimate and illuminating memoir/divDIV How I Grew is Mary McCarthy’s intensely personal autobiography of her life from age thirteen to twenty-one./divDIV Orphaned at six, McCarthy was raised by her maternal grandparents in Seattle, Washington. Although her official birthdate is in 1912, it wasn’t until she turned thirteen that, in McCarthy’s own words, she was “born as a mind.” With detail driven by an almost astonishing memory recall, McCarthy gives us a masterful account of these formative years. From her wild adolescence—including losing her virginity at fourteen—through her eventual escape to Vassar, the bestselling novelist, essayist, and critic chronicles her relationships with family, friends, lovers, and the teachers who would influence her writing career./divDIV Filled with McCarthy’s penetrating insights and trenchant wit, this is an unblinkingly honest and fearless self-portrait of a young woman coming of age—and the perfect companion to McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood./divDIV This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate./divDIV/div/div
Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy
Author: Frances Kiernan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393323072
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 846
Book Description
A revealing portrait of the dramatic life of writer and intellectual Mary McCarthy. From her Partisan Review days to her controversial success as the author of The Group, to an epic libel battle with Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy brought a nineteenth-century scope and drama to her emblematic twentieth-century life. Dubbed by Time as "quite possibly the cleverest woman America has ever produced," McCarthy moved in a circle of ferociously sharp-tongued intellectuals—all of whom had plenty to say about this diamond in their midst. Frances Kiernan's biography does justice to one of the most controversial American intellectuals of the twentieth century. With interviews from dozens of McCarthy's friends, former lovers, literary and political comrades-in-arms, awestruck admirers, amused observers, and bitter adversaries, Seeing Mary Plain is rich in ironic judgment and eloquent testimony. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2000 and a Washington Post Book World "Rave".
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393323072
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 846
Book Description
A revealing portrait of the dramatic life of writer and intellectual Mary McCarthy. From her Partisan Review days to her controversial success as the author of The Group, to an epic libel battle with Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy brought a nineteenth-century scope and drama to her emblematic twentieth-century life. Dubbed by Time as "quite possibly the cleverest woman America has ever produced," McCarthy moved in a circle of ferociously sharp-tongued intellectuals—all of whom had plenty to say about this diamond in their midst. Frances Kiernan's biography does justice to one of the most controversial American intellectuals of the twentieth century. With interviews from dozens of McCarthy's friends, former lovers, literary and political comrades-in-arms, awestruck admirers, amused observers, and bitter adversaries, Seeing Mary Plain is rich in ironic judgment and eloquent testimony. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2000 and a Washington Post Book World "Rave".
The Oasis
Author: Mary McCarthy
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612192297
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
A vicious and brilliant satire of human vanity from the author of the classic bestseller The Group Long out of print, Mary McCarthy's second novel is a bitingly funny satire set in the early years of the Cold War about a group of writers, editors, and intellectuals who retreat to rural New England to found a hilltop utopia. With this group loosely divided into two factions—purists, led by the libertarian editor Macdougal Macdermott, and the realists, skeptics led by the smug Will Taub—the situation is ripe not only for disaster but for comedy, as reality clashes with their dreams of a perfect society. Though written as a roman à clef, McCarthy barely disguised her characters, including using her former lover Philip Rahv, founder of Partisan Review, as the model for Will Taub. As a result, the novel caused an absolute explosion of outrage among the literary elite of the day, who clearly recognized themselves among her all-too-accurate portraits. Rahv threatened a lawsuit to stop publication. Diana Trilling, Lionel Trilling's wife, called McCarthy a "thug." McCarthy's friend Dwight McDonald (Macdougal Macdermott) called it "vicious, malicious, and nasty." Never one to shy away from controversy, McCarthy's portrait of her generation had indeed drawn blood. But the brilliance of the novel has outlasted its first detonation and can now be enjoyed for its aphoritic, fearless dissection of the vanities of human endeavor. In an added bonus, the renowned essayist Vivian Gornick details in a moving introduction the importance of McCarthy's intellectual and artistic bravery, and how she influenced a generation of young writers and thinkers.
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612192297
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
A vicious and brilliant satire of human vanity from the author of the classic bestseller The Group Long out of print, Mary McCarthy's second novel is a bitingly funny satire set in the early years of the Cold War about a group of writers, editors, and intellectuals who retreat to rural New England to found a hilltop utopia. With this group loosely divided into two factions—purists, led by the libertarian editor Macdougal Macdermott, and the realists, skeptics led by the smug Will Taub—the situation is ripe not only for disaster but for comedy, as reality clashes with their dreams of a perfect society. Though written as a roman à clef, McCarthy barely disguised her characters, including using her former lover Philip Rahv, founder of Partisan Review, as the model for Will Taub. As a result, the novel caused an absolute explosion of outrage among the literary elite of the day, who clearly recognized themselves among her all-too-accurate portraits. Rahv threatened a lawsuit to stop publication. Diana Trilling, Lionel Trilling's wife, called McCarthy a "thug." McCarthy's friend Dwight McDonald (Macdougal Macdermott) called it "vicious, malicious, and nasty." Never one to shy away from controversy, McCarthy's portrait of her generation had indeed drawn blood. But the brilliance of the novel has outlasted its first detonation and can now be enjoyed for its aphoritic, fearless dissection of the vanities of human endeavor. In an added bonus, the renowned essayist Vivian Gornick details in a moving introduction the importance of McCarthy's intellectual and artistic bravery, and how she influenced a generation of young writers and thinkers.
The Group
Author: Mary McCarthy
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480438235
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 459
Book Description
This smash bestseller about privileged Vassar classmates shocked America in the sixties and remains “juicy . . . witty . . . brilliant” (Cosmopolitan). At Vassar, they were known as “the group”—eight young women of privilege, the closest of friends, an eclectic mix of vibrant personalities. A week after graduation in 1933, they all gather for the wedding of Kay Strong, one of their own, before going their separate ways in the world. In the years that follow, they will each know accomplishment and loss in equal measure, pursuing careers and marriage, experiencing the joys and traumas of sexual awakening and motherhood, all while suffering through betrayals, infidelities, and sometimes madness. Some of them will drift apart. Some will play important roles in the personal dramas of others. But it is tragedy that will ultimately unite the group once again. A novel that stunned the world when it was first published in 1963, Mary McCarthy’s The Group found acclaim, controversy, and a place atop the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two years for its frank and controversial exploration of women’s issues, social concerns, and sexuality. A blistering satire of the mores of an emergent generation of women, The Group is McCarthy’s enduring masterpiece, still as relevant, powerful, and wonderfully entertaining fifty years on. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480438235
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 459
Book Description
This smash bestseller about privileged Vassar classmates shocked America in the sixties and remains “juicy . . . witty . . . brilliant” (Cosmopolitan). At Vassar, they were known as “the group”—eight young women of privilege, the closest of friends, an eclectic mix of vibrant personalities. A week after graduation in 1933, they all gather for the wedding of Kay Strong, one of their own, before going their separate ways in the world. In the years that follow, they will each know accomplishment and loss in equal measure, pursuing careers and marriage, experiencing the joys and traumas of sexual awakening and motherhood, all while suffering through betrayals, infidelities, and sometimes madness. Some of them will drift apart. Some will play important roles in the personal dramas of others. But it is tragedy that will ultimately unite the group once again. A novel that stunned the world when it was first published in 1963, Mary McCarthy’s The Group found acclaim, controversy, and a place atop the New York Times bestseller list for nearly two years for its frank and controversial exploration of women’s issues, social concerns, and sexuality. A blistering satire of the mores of an emergent generation of women, The Group is McCarthy’s enduring masterpiece, still as relevant, powerful, and wonderfully entertaining fifty years on. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.
The Company She Keeps
Author: Mary McCarthy
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480438340
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
The celebrated author of The Group offers a “clever, witty, polished” portrait of the 1940s NYC literary bohemia she knew so well in this debut novel (The New York Times). Margaret Sargent is young and fearless, a deep thinker inspired by the bohemian energy that abounds in New York City in the years leading up to the Second World War. With careless abandon, she destroys her marriage and numerous love affairs as she moves through the social circles of artists and writers, playing at the fringes of political extremism. She is an enigma, often wanton and frivolous, but possessing intelligence and a razor-sharp wit, as well as a troubling core of inner darkness, self-doubt, and puzzling tendencies toward self-destruction. For Margaret, urban life in the 1930s is an ongoing adventure—ever-changing, always surprising, and deeply, profoundly unsatisfying. Mary McCarthy, author of the bestselling American classic The Group, burst boldly onto the literary scene with her provocative debut, The Company She Keeps. A brilliant, stylistically inventive novel, it offers a rich portrait of a truly fascinating protagonist in six revealing episodes. Love her, despise her, or fear for her, you will never forget Margaret Sargent. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480438340
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
The celebrated author of The Group offers a “clever, witty, polished” portrait of the 1940s NYC literary bohemia she knew so well in this debut novel (The New York Times). Margaret Sargent is young and fearless, a deep thinker inspired by the bohemian energy that abounds in New York City in the years leading up to the Second World War. With careless abandon, she destroys her marriage and numerous love affairs as she moves through the social circles of artists and writers, playing at the fringes of political extremism. She is an enigma, often wanton and frivolous, but possessing intelligence and a razor-sharp wit, as well as a troubling core of inner darkness, self-doubt, and puzzling tendencies toward self-destruction. For Margaret, urban life in the 1930s is an ongoing adventure—ever-changing, always surprising, and deeply, profoundly unsatisfying. Mary McCarthy, author of the bestselling American classic The Group, burst boldly onto the literary scene with her provocative debut, The Company She Keeps. A brilliant, stylistically inventive novel, it offers a rich portrait of a truly fascinating protagonist in six revealing episodes. Love her, despise her, or fear for her, you will never forget Margaret Sargent. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.
Cherry
Author: Mary Karr
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101650745
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
From Mary Karr comes this gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age. Picking up where the bestselling The Liars' Club left off, Karr dashes down the trail of her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom. Fleeing the thrills and terrors of adolescence, she clashes against authority in all its forms and hooks up with an unforgettable band of heads and bona-fide geniuses. Parts of Cherry will leave you gasping with laughter. Karr assembles a self from the smokiest beginnings, delivering a long-awaited sequel that is both "bawdy and wise" (San Francisco Chronicle).
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101650745
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
From Mary Karr comes this gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age. Picking up where the bestselling The Liars' Club left off, Karr dashes down the trail of her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom. Fleeing the thrills and terrors of adolescence, she clashes against authority in all its forms and hooks up with an unforgettable band of heads and bona-fide geniuses. Parts of Cherry will leave you gasping with laughter. Karr assembles a self from the smokiest beginnings, delivering a long-awaited sequel that is both "bawdy and wise" (San Francisco Chronicle).
An Enlarged Heart
Author: Cynthia Zarin
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307962199
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
An Enlarged Heart, the exquisitely written prose debut from prize-winning poet Cynthia Zarin, is a poignantly understated exploration of the author’s experiences with love, work, and the surprise of time’s passage. In these intertwined episodes from her New York world and beyond, she charts the shifting and complicated parameters of contemporary life and family in writing that feels nearly fictional in its richness of scene, dialogue, and mood. The writer herself is the marvelously rueful character at the center of these tales, at first a bewildered young woman, navigating the terrain of new jobs and borrowed apartments and the rapidly fading New York of people like Mr. Ferri, the Upper East Side tailor (“a wren of a man with pins flashing in his teeth”). By the end, whether Zarin is writing about vanished restaurants, her decades-long love affair with her collection of coats, a newlywed journey to Italy, a child’s illness, Mary McCarthy’s file cabinet, or the inner life of the New Yorker staff she knew as a young woman, this history of the heart shows us how persistent the past is in returning to us with entirely new lessons, and that there are some truths not even a tailor can alter.
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307962199
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
An Enlarged Heart, the exquisitely written prose debut from prize-winning poet Cynthia Zarin, is a poignantly understated exploration of the author’s experiences with love, work, and the surprise of time’s passage. In these intertwined episodes from her New York world and beyond, she charts the shifting and complicated parameters of contemporary life and family in writing that feels nearly fictional in its richness of scene, dialogue, and mood. The writer herself is the marvelously rueful character at the center of these tales, at first a bewildered young woman, navigating the terrain of new jobs and borrowed apartments and the rapidly fading New York of people like Mr. Ferri, the Upper East Side tailor (“a wren of a man with pins flashing in his teeth”). By the end, whether Zarin is writing about vanished restaurants, her decades-long love affair with her collection of coats, a newlywed journey to Italy, a child’s illness, Mary McCarthy’s file cabinet, or the inner life of the New Yorker staff she knew as a young woman, this history of the heart shows us how persistent the past is in returning to us with entirely new lessons, and that there are some truths not even a tailor can alter.