Soap, Moisturizer or a Luminous Novel?

When you see the words Wash and Wrinkle, don't think of hygiene or the creams we use to ward off the ravages of Father Time. Think books. Margaret Wrinkle's debut novel Wash.
                                                                                                           

  This past Friday night, Oct 27th, the New York City chapter of The Women's National Book Association celebrated the tenth anniversary of National Reading Group Month with an event at Penguin Random House honoring debut authors. After a lively panel discussion, I had the immense pleasure of meeting and chatting with Margaret Wrinkle, one of the four panelists, all whose novels have been Great Group Read's selections.  

 

 Wash, Wrinkle's lush debut, with some of the most beautiful metaphors I've ever read, moved me from the first page to the last when I closed the book with a deep sigh.  The story takes the reader on a journey from the burgeoning South, with slave breeding, to West Africa and back again where we meet Wash and his mother, Mena, who envelopes the reader in the beauty of her African spirituality while she infuses her son with his history and people. Pallas and Richardson, along with all of Wrinkle's other characters, are so vividly portrayed that three weeks after finishing the book I cannot shake them from my mind. Just as Wash's ancestors breathe beside him, Wrinkle's characters continue to walk beside me. 

Wrinkle captures the voice of the African slave, as if she had lived among them, as well the distinct voice of the white male slave owner. As a writer, I'm envious of that ability plus of her gorgeous phrases, similes and metaphors. I found myself dog-earring pages so I could go back and re-read the beautiful prose. Plus, I'm intrigued by her use of the craft in giving each character his or her own voice. When I asked why she wrote each one separately in first person, Margaret explained that she had to, that each one spoke to her. And, to make me even more envious of her talent, she steps back from each character and uses an omniscient narrator to bring the reader into the scene, to let us know what else is going on at the same time. When I commented on that technique wondering why she used it, Margaret smiled and said, "I had to know what they were all feeling."

Whether black or white, Wrinkle throws her characters into relationships, some brutal and some loving harboring feelings forbidden by the institution of slavery. Through each of their stories, the novel is a gift both haunting and tender.  

A Bit of Flash in Greenwich Village

 It was a clear, warm spring evening. A gentle breeze blew through the open doors of the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village where members of The Women's National Book Association congregated. It was Open Mic Night for the New York City chapter. Fourteen of its members read aloud from their novels, memoirs, essays, poems and short stories. The words and wine flowed through the Café's intimate dining room, a scene from the 1950s sans cigarette smoke.

I had the pleasure of reading my flash fiction, Dry Bandages, published in the April 2016 edition of Foliate Oak Literary Magazine. What is Flash Fiction you ask? A complete story generally under 1,000 words. Dry Bandages comes in at 552 words. Click on the video on the right and you can pretend you're in the cafe with us. Pour yourself a glass of wine, it'll seem more real, then sit back and listen. 

The picture on the left, the cover of the program for this Open Mic Night, is from the WNBA (books not basketball) Dinner Dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania on March 18,1938. Yes, the organization has been around for a long time - almost 100 years. It was established in 1917 in America before women even had the right to vote.

The Women's National Book Association is a vibrant organization with some 800 members from nine cities across the country, a broad-based non-profit organization granting three distinguished national awards annually and a history of lively events. For more information on the organization, upcoming events and membership go to www.wnba-books.org. And for the coveted list of  novels and memoirs perfect for book clubs, visit their Great Group Reads site at www.nationalreadinggroupmonth.org. I'll be back with more info on Great Group Reads in the fall. October is National Reading Group Month.

Are You Looking For a Fabulous Book?

October is National Reading Group Month and Great Group Reads (GGR) has posted their list of books for 2015.  Publishers, hoping their book will make the coveted list, submit novels and memoirs to the committee early each year. Throughout the winter and spring, the committee reads approximately 100 books narrowing it down to the best 20 for book clubs. This year we had so many incredible titles that we chose 21.  Please go to the website, www.nationalreadinggroupmonth.org, and click on Great Group Reads to find the 2015 list. We all know you can't judge a book by its cover, or its title, so there is also a short synopsis for each book.

Not only are these novels and memoirs perfect for book clubs, they are delicious reads. They'll make you want to sink into a comfortable chair and devour the beautifully written words, meet characters you think you know or wish you did - even some you'll be glad you don't. Some books will carry you to distant lands or distant times. In others, you'll be ensconced in a foreign world and smell the air and taste the foods, feel the textures.  You'll find yourself in a mountainous village in Yemen in the 1920s or on a distant planet inhabited by earthlings or in a restrictive Hasidic Jewish Community in New York, even a remote Appalachian coal town. You'll walk through rural western Canada and become part of life in Mississippi in the 1950s or New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, and you'll experience childhood in a Jewish orphanage in New York City in the early twentieth century with all its repercussions. You'll shift between an Islamic home in Pakistan to college life in New England and enjoy a rare look into a closed society in North Korea where contact with the outside world is strictly forbidden. All are a reader's treat.

To celebrate National Reading Group Month, the Women's National Book Association will be having special events, featuring authors, in twelve cities across the U.S.  All are listed on the website: www.nationalreadinggroupmonth.org/events_chapter.html Find one in a city close to you. Each promises an exciting evening.

And since I am the Literary Leotard, I must put in a little of the leotard side: After spending wonderful hours with these new characters and settings, get up and take a walk. I know you won't want to put the books down, but you must stay active. Move your body. Then sit back down and turn those pages.

Stacks of Books - Great Group Reads 2013

I’ve been asked why I haven’t posted a blog recently. “Where have you been? What’ve you been up to?” I’d like to say I was meandering the streets of Paris, tasting the wine in Tuscany, or sitting on a white sandy beach with a book and cool libation in hand, working on a tan, but actually I’ve been in my Laz Y Boy reading. Voraciously. I’m honored to be on the Great Group Reads (GGR) committee sponsored by the Women’s National Book Association.

 GGR is a group of members from across the country who decide, after months of reading stacks of novels and memoirs, all submitted by publishers, which books make up the GGR list for 2013. All books have to have been published during the year. The list comes out in October for National Reading Group Month. As it states on their website, www.nationalreadinggroup.org,  NRGM fosters the growth and promotes the love of literature. It’s an opportunity for reading groups to reflect on their accomplishments and plan for the future – the perfect time to join or start a group. You’ll find a link to the GGR 2012 list on that site – Happy Reading!

 In February, publishers start sending out the books they’d like to have represented on the Great Group Reads list and we practically put everything else aside and start reading. Roz Reisner, GGR Coordinator, a former librarian and the author of Read On...Life Stories: Reading Lists for Every
Taste and Jewish American Literature: A Guide to Reading
Interests, and author of the blog A Reader’s Place. (http://areadersplace.net), offered me the opportunity to be her assistant, to be a committee of two, who make the original selections. I was thrilled to accept – and still am fifteen books later. It’s fun to go to the mailbox everyday to see what’s waiting for me – almost like when I was in camp and went to “mail-call.” Out of the seventy-five or eighty books we eventually receive, we widdle the list down to fifty.  Then the
publishers send our choices to the rest of the committee and they read – and read
– and make the final cuts bringing the list to twenty. And in October, the list
is presented: on-line, to libraries, to book stores, at events. Take a look at
the website and you’ll see where those events were in 2012 and plan to go in
2013.

So, that’s why I haven’t been blogging. At 6:30 this morning the words for this post woke me up and here I am. The house is quiet. My husband is asleep and I’m at the computer. Early morning is my best time to write, but I generally don’t want to leave my warm bed with my honey at my side for a cold computer. I could have picked up Float, the book I’m reading by JoeAnn Hart – yes, for GGR – but didn’t want to have the incandescent bulb shine in the quiet, dark room and disturb my sleeping man.

The first book I read for GGR is The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Legansky. I’m not a fan of magical realism, but this book, set in 1950s era Louisiana, I do recommend for book clubs and it is already in stores. Some of the books the publishers send are not out yet, some are advanced copies, and we even received a manuscript the other day. Legansky’s debut novel is a book you can curl up with, as I did. I had my grand-dog cuddled on my lap keeping me warm, as I read. Charley liked the book, too. It was great sleeping time for him. I told him about Bonaventure Arrow, the little boy with a remarkable gift, but Charley only cocked his head to the side and gave me one of those doggie looks – What? No treat? So what are saying?  

 On the subject of dogs, I recently finished reading The Dog Lived (and so will I) by Teresa J. Rhyne.  Marley and Me meets The Art of Racing in the Rain. If you love dogs, you’ll love this book. And if you don’t, it’s a terrific read anyway. The author tells her story of her dog’s and her cancer (I’m not giving anything away – it’s right on the back cover) Topics you’d think would be depressing she somehow makes funny and I laughed as I worried about both Teresa and Seamus – though of course I knew they both survived because she wrote the memoir!

 From the first paragraph of David, by Ray Robertson, I was drawn into the character and his story. David, born a slave in 1847, but raised by a free man in the Elgin Settlement in Canada, which by 1852 housed seventy-five free black families and was studied by Lincoln,  is an arrogant, irreverent, multi-layered s.o.b with a dry, clipped sense of humor. The story constantly jumps from present to past, from David as a middle-aged man to a child, but I found it easy to follow. Book groups will find a great deal to discuss with this little gem.

Since receiving our first book in mid February, Roz and I, together, have read approximately twenty-five or thirty. There’s a stack waiting for me, so I’ve got to go. The publishers are anxious for my opinion. Seriously??!! Do I really hold so much power? For GGR, I guess our committee does. Publishers want to see their books on the list and authors dance when they make it. It means sales, and that’s the name of the game. But for us readers, we just want a good book to curl up with – on a beach chair under an umbrella, with a cup of tea on a comfy chair, in bed tucked under soft blankets – wherever you love to read-  devour the book and enjoy the comfort of a wonderful story.