| Landslide: True Stories Contributor(s): Proctor, Minna (Author) |
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ISBN: 193678761X ISBN-13: 9781936787616 Publisher: Catapult OUR PRICE: $15.26 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2017 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Family & Relationships | Eldercare - Literary Collections | Essays - Biography & Autobiography | Women |
| Dewey: 814.54 |
| LCCN: 2016952070 |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.5" W x 8.2" (0.50 lbs) 160 pages |
| Themes: - Generational Orientation - Elderly/Aged - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: "Landslide is that rare book that somehow succeeds in being both knowing and open-hearted, both formally sly and emotionally direct. Its timeless subjects--grief, storytelling, the giving up of childish things--are rendered in ways that are as movingly honest as they are probing and unfamiliar. A swift, compelling read." --Adam Haslett, author of Imagine Me Gone Minna Zallman Proctor's Landslide is a captivating collection of interconnected personal essays. These "true stories" explore the author's complicated relationship with her mother--who was diagnosed with cancer at age fifty-seven and died fifteen years later--and the ways in which their connection was long the "prime mover" of Proctor's life, the subtle force coursing beneath her adulthood. As such, these vibrant essays also narrate the trials and triumphs of Proctor's own life--shifting between America and Italy (and loving "being a foreigner, the constant sense of unfamiliarity that supplanted all of my expectations and disappointments"), her bumpy first marriage, the profound pleasure she takes in motherhood, and the confounding experience of trying to arrange a Jewish burial for her "Jewish, not quite Jewish" mother. Proctor has an integrity and humor that is never extinguished despite life's mounting difficulties. She also slyly questions her own narrative throughout. "Not having told this story before means I never fixed many details in my memory," she writes. "[I] have to rely on flashes, the transparent stills that hang in my mind, made of smell, the way the light casts, the wind on skin." The essays in this book are a sharply intelligent exploration of what happens when death and divorce unmoor you from certainties, and about the unreliable stories we tell ourselves, and others, in order to live. |
Contributor Bio(s): Proctor, Minna: - Minna Zallman Proctor is a writer, critic and translator. Her first book Do You Hear What I Hear? An Unreligious Writer Investigates Religious Calling was published by Viking Press in 2005. Kirkus called it 'Intelligent and intellectually provocative, ... a notable example of fine writing on religion.' Her translations from Italian have been much acclaimed, and she is the recipient of several fellowships and residencies including at MacDowell where she was named a Kate and George Kendall Fellow. She has worked as a magazine editor on various publications, including Colors and Bomb magazine. Her essays and book reviews have been widely published, including in The New York Times Book Review, npr.org, L.A. Times Book Review, Aperture, Bookforum, The Nation, New York Observer and Salon. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is the Editor of The Literary Review. |