Amy Scribner

FictionHistorical Fiction

Secrets in sanctuary

Review by Amy Scribner

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, April 2017

What was Germany like for regular citizens in the months and years after World War II? In the enthralling The Women in the Castle, Jessica Shattuck paints a portrait of a postwar country wracked with guilt and confusion, trying to regroup and rebuild even as Allied forces require Germans to watch footage of the liberation of Buchenwald and paper villages with photos of concentration camp victims. In this uncertain world, where many Germans still believe these actions to be propaganda and don’t yet understand the full horror of what has transpired, three women come together through unlikely connections.

Marianne von Lingenfels is an aristocrat whose husband died due to his involvement in an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life. Before he dies, Marianne pledges to take care of the wives and children of other resisters. Making good on that promise, Marianne retrieves Benita, who is being abused by Russian soldiers in Berlin, and locates Benita’s son, who’s being held in a Nazi children’s home.

The group makes its way to the von Lingenfels’ castle, where Marianne’s children also live. Then quiet Ania and her two shell-shocked boys arrive, ostensibly fleeing the Red Army. But there’s more to her story, and Benita’s, and it will take years for Marianne to fully understand the pasts of the women she’s been charged with protecting.

Shattuck, whose novel The Hazards of Good Breeding was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, sheds new light on World War II’s aftermath and the families left behind, and raises poignant questions about blind loyalty: “Could you see a person’s soul in their face? Marianne and Albrecht had often argued about this. Yes, she had insisted. Didn’t you know from the moment you saw Hitler’s photograph that he was bad? Albrecht wasn’t sure. If it was so obvious, he pointed out, how did he fool the rest of Germany?”

The Women in the Castle is haunting, a beautifully written and painfully vivid glimpse into one of the most horrific times in world history.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What was Germany like for regular citizens in the months and years after World War II? In the enthralling The Women in the Castle, Jessica Shattuck paints a portrait of a postwar country wracked with guilt and confusion, trying to regroup and rebuild even as Allied forces require Germans to watch footage of the liberation of Buchenwald and paper villages with photos of concentration camp victims. In this uncertain world, where many Germans still believe these actions to be propaganda and don’t yet understand the full horror of what has transpired, three women come together through unlikely connections.

FictionPopular Fiction

A dangerous obsession

Review by Amy Scribner

Meredith Oliver is the girl who got left behind. A normal teenager semi-successfully navigating the shark-infested waters of middle school, she is in a sandwich shop when the most popular girl in school is kidnapped at gunpoint. “Get up,” the man says to Lisa Bellow, who dutifully follows him out the door. Meredith, frozen with fear, doesn’t even see the man’s face or car.

Meredith is sure Lisa doesn’t know her, even though they’ve gone to school together since elementary school and their lockers are next to each other. The most contact they’ve had in recent years was when Lisa directed Meredith—in true mean-girl style—to sit differently on her cafeteria chair so her butt didn’t hang over the edge.

The Oliver family has already seen its share of tragedy—older son Evan was a promising baseball player until an errant fly ball ended his dreams. Their parents, Claire and Mark, stagger under the weight of the kidnapping, simultaneously thrilled that Meredith was spared by the kidnapper and guilty that another girl is likely gone forever.

“No, she didn’t care one bit who Lisa Bellow was; the only important thing about Lisa Bellow, to Claire, was that she, not Meredith, was the girl who was taken. Certainly it would be better if she were found alive, better for Meredith, but all that really mattered was that Meredith was alive. Meredith was safe. Meredith, her baby, her baby girl, was down the hall.”

Once Lisa is taken, Meredith begins envisioning Lisa trapped in a dark, cold apartment with her abductor and abuser. The visions soon morph as Meredith grows desperate to reach Lisa before it’s too late. She retreats into her own mind, searching for clues that might lead her to Lisa.

The second novel from writer Susan Perabo (best known for her short stories) is wrenching, a dark yet beautifully told story of family, fear and grief. In the end, the question isn’t whether Meredith can save her classmate, but whether the Olivers can save Meredith.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Meredith Oliver is the girl who got left behind. A normal teenager semi-successfully navigating the shark-infested waters of middle school, she is in a sandwich shop when the most popular girl in school is kidnapped at gunpoint. “Get up,” the man says to Lisa Bellow, who dutifully follows him out the door. Meredith, frozen with fear, doesn’t even see the man’s face or car.

NonfictionMemoir

A long, strange trip to wellness

Review by Amy Scribner

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, February 2017

Depressed, suffering from premenstrual dysphoric disorder and wrought with pain from a frozen shoulder, Ayelet Waldman was on a steady diet of antidepressants, estrogen patches and sleeping pills. Yet her pain and wild mood swings persisted. Her four children and husband (writer Michael Chabon) were the targets of most of her wrath.

“I found myself in a state of seemingly perpetual irritability,” she writes. “I seethed, I turned that fury on the people around me, and then I collapsed in shame at these outbursts. . . . I couldn’t manage to lift the grimy curtain of my unhappiness.”

Then she stumbled on a book about microdosing—taking tiny amounts of LSD, ofterwise known as acid. The doses are so small that they don’t cause hallucination but improve mood and focus. The process of microdosing was “not so much going on an acid trip as going on an acid errand,” she writes.

Following a strict dosing protocol, she experienced decreased physical pain and increased joy. Waldman, author of Bad Mother and a series of entertaining mysteries about a public defender turned stay-at-home mom, began her career as a lawyer and taught a college class on the war on drugs. She struggles with the morality of purchasing and taking illegal drugs, albeit for a good cause. She also writes openly about how her mental health has impacted her marriage; Chabon is portrayed with near-saintly patience, and a scene where they attend therapy is a lovely glimpse at a couple in it for the long haul.

A Really Good Day is a surprisingly poignant, funny and deeply introspective journal of Waldman’s month of treatment. Ultimately, her story is about family, marriage and dealing with modern life, with all its stressors and moments of beauty.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Depressed, suffering from premenstrual dysphoric disorder and wrought with pain from a frozen shoulder, Ayelet Waldman was on a steady diet of antidepressants, estrogen patches and sleeping pills. Yet her pain and wild mood swings persisted. Her four children and husband (writer Michael Chabon) were the targets of most of her wrath.

NonfictionMemoir

Clinton Kelly’s hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir

Review by Amy Scribner

Maybe you’re a newish Clinton Kelly fan, courtesy of ABC’s daytime talk and cookfest “The Chew.” Or maybe you’ve loved him since his days as the mildly catty co-host of the makeover show “What Not to Wear,” in which he and Stacy London saved legions of American women from slogan sweatshirts and mom jeans. 

No matter how you know Kelly, you will know him infinitely better after reading I Hate Everyone, Except You, his hilarious, wise and revealing new memoir. It seems no topic is off-limits for Kelly (except his beloved grandma), who grew up gawky and gay on Long Island. He writes warmly of his family, including his stepfather, who gamely took on him and his sister when he married their mom. He recalls his time on “What Not to Wear” with just the right dash of gossip, and writes candidly about meeting his future husband, psychologist Damon Bayles. 

He also takes on heavier topics, such as the time he posted his wedding photo on his Facebook fan page on the day in 2015 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.

“The post received 180,000 ‘likes’ and more than 6,000 people stopped whatever they were doing that day to wish us love and congratulations,” he writes. “Five people thought it was appropriate to tell us we were going to Hell. If you’ve never been told by a complete stranger that you’re going to Hell, let me try to explain the feeling to you. It makes you feel something like sadness, but it’s not quite sadness. . . . It’s smaller, subtler, like a thousand shallow pin pricks.”

I read this book in one sitting, so engrossed that I ignored my children, social media and my to-do list for several blissful, laughter-filled hours. Kelly delivers a perfect blend of heart, humor and trucker language.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Clinton Kelly about his book, I Hate Everyone, Except You.

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

No matter how you know Kelly, you will know him infinitely better after reading I Hate Everyone, Except You, his hilarious, wise and revealing new memoir. It seems no topic is off-limits for Kelly (except his beloved grandma), who grew up gawky and gay on Long Island.

FictionSatire

A hilarious look at New York’s prep school scene

Review by Amy Scribner

What is it about books set at elite schools? The grosgrain ribbon belt-bedecked cover of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. The anxiety-filled Princeton offices in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s Admission. The bittersweet final days of college in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. These stories somehow manage to intrigue even those of us who’ve never set foot in a prep school, let alone an Ivy League college.

It’s no surprise, of course, that Amy Poeppel—author of the deliciously smart Small Admissions—went to Wellesley College and worked in admissions for what her book jacket calls “a prestigious independent school.” Her razor-sharp observations of families desperate to place their darlings in the best Manhattan schools can only come from someone who’s lived in that world.

Kate Pearson was on track to become an academic, applying to grad schools in her chosen field of anthropology. She had a gorgeous if caddish boyfriend, Robert, who was “so ridiculously French, which was somehow an asset and a defect at the same time,” Poeppel writes. 

When Robert ditches her as soon as she lands in Paris to live with him, Kate abandons her carefully planned life and takes up residence on her New York couch. Her friend Chloe, who is Robert’s cousin and introduced the pair, feels guilty. Her sister worries for Kate’s mental health and connects her with the admissions director at Hudson Day School, who is desperate to fill an admissions counselor position before the rush. Despite a catastrophically bad interview, Kate gets the job. Slowly, slowly, she reclaims her life, her friendships and her way.

Poeppel nails the naked ambition of New York power moms for whom placing their children in a prep school is as important as securing the newest Birkin bag. Small Admissions is a laugh-out-loud funny look at status and rejection in all its forms, from the classroom to the bedroom.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook

What is it about books set at elite schools? The grosgrain ribbon belt-bedecked cover of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. The anxiety-filled Princeton offices in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s Admission. The bittersweet final days of college in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. These stories somehow manage to intrigue even those of us who’ve never set foot in a prep school, let alone an Ivy League college.
Nonfiction

A meeting of great minds

Review by Amy Scribner

You know Michael Lewis, even if you don’t recognize his name. Three of his books have been made into bestselling movies: how data analysis changed the face of baseball recruiting in Moneyball; how a football player defied the odds of his impoverished upbringing in The Blind Side; and how Wall Street caused the 2008 financial crisis in The Big Short.

Lewis has a keen eye for finding unusual, complex subjects and spinning them into absolutely unforgettable stories. In The Undoing Project, he introduces us to two Israeli psychologists who changed the way we think about human decision-making.

Amos Tversky was born to Russian parents who fled persecution in the 1920s and helped establish Israel. He became a paratrooper, earning one of the Israeli army’s top awards for bravery for saving a fellow soldier. Daniel Kahneman was just 10 years old when his family fled Paris, hiding in barns and chicken coops to avoid the rapidly advancing Nazis. The Kahnemans moved to Jerusalem in 1947, and Danny, identified as intellectually gifted, was allowed to bypass military service and enroll in college.

Both ended up teaching psychology at Hebrew University. Where Kahneman was a “bold genius” while teaching, he was moody and unsure of himself. Tversky, on the other hand, “was the most terrifying mind most people had ever encountered,” and supremely self-confident. The two began collaborating, forming a decades-long, sometimes rocky partnership that worked, in large part, because they were so different.

“Amos was a one-man wrecking ball for illogical arguments; when Danny heard an illogical argument, he asked, What might that be true of?” Lewis writes.

Together, through years of experimentation, they proved that our all-too-human minds make judgments based not on logic or numbers, but on memory and stereotypes. Their groundbreaking work had major implications for many fields, from medicine to sports to economics. For example, the Houston Rockets passed on shooting guard Jeremy Lin, a Chinese-American from Harvard, despite their data model showing him to be a top draft pick. Why? Because they saw a “not terribly athletic Asian kid.” Stereotype trumped information, and they missed out on a star player.

The Undoing Project is a thoroughly fascinating look at psychology, academia and life in mid-century Israel. Ultimately, though, it is the story of two unlikely, deeply connected friends who changed the way we think about the way we think. 

Michael Lewis has a keen eye for finding unusual, complex subjects and spinning them into absolutely unforgettable stories. In The Undoing Project, he introduces us to two Israeli psychologists who changed the way we think about human decision-making.
FictionHistorical Fiction

A sideshow performer searches for her place among humanity

Review by Amy Scribner

It is 1854, and Mexican singer Julia Pastrana is making her way to New Orleans to seek her fortune. Raised by an old nun after being abandoned by her mother, she has a good voice, is a decent dancer and speaks three languages. But her most singular feature is her thick black hair, which covers her entire body. Her strong jaw gives her an even more ape-like appearance.

Invited to join a traveling sideshow, Julia travels from city to city, remaining veiled in public between shows so as not to cause a panic. She’s billed as Troglodyte of Ancient Days, the Ugliest Woman in the World and Mujer Osa (Lady Bear). Audiences around first America and then Europe are captivated—they don’t know whether to be horrified or charmed by this intelligent, well-spoken woman who looks something other than human.

“She was the most extraordinary being that had ever existed on the face of this ridiculous earth,” author Carol Birch writes of Julia, a real-life historical figure. “Everyone said so. They wanted to see her, they wanted to meet her, everyone came, the great, the good, the scared, bewitched, bewildered, the willing and unwilling. And they paid.”

Julia is managed by Theo Lent, a down-on-his luck showman who eventually, improbably, falls in love with her. But even after they marry, he can’t quite get over his shame, writhing with discomfort at what others must think of him, the man who sleeps with an ape.

Orphans of the Carnival is a strange, transfixing novel. The gorgeously written story moves between Julia’s story and 1980s London, where a depressed woman named Rose is stockpiling (one might say hoarding) found objects in her small flat, to the dismay of those who love her. She picks up a small, burned-looking doll that she names Tattoo, whose bittersweet significance is not revealed until the very end of the novel.

“Am I human?” Julia asks a fortune-teller. “It’s possible to be human and not know it,” the woman replies. Orphans of the Carnival is about how we can find humanity in all fellow creatures, which is surely a message worth pondering now more than ever.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It is 1854, and Mexican singer Julia Pastrana is making her way to New Orleans to seek her fortune. Raised by an old nun after being abandoned by her mother, she has a good voice, is a decent dancer and speaks three languages. But her most singular feature is her thick black hair, which covers her entire body. Her strong jaw gives her an even more ape-like appearance.
NonfictionMemoir

Jennifer Weiner tells all

Review by Amy Scribner

I consider myself a bit of a Jennifer Weiner connoisseur. I’ve read all her books and short stories, watched her short-lived TV series “State of Georgia” and laughed at her live-tweeting during “The Bachelor.”

Yet even I—a borderline creepy Jen Weiner fan—was surprised by many of the personal details she divulges in her beautifully heartfelt new memoir. Hungry Heart is about all the phases of Weiner’s life: an awkward Jewish teenager in suburban New Jersey, a Princeton student, a bestselling writer, a twice-married mom of two girls.

“You fall down. You get hurt. You get up again” is the book’s refrain. And while she seemingly lives a charmed life, Weiner has had her share of falls. She writes poignantly about her father, a successful doctor, who was doting when she was young but then left the family and died a drug addict. It was only after his death that Weiner and her siblings learned that he had fathered another child. She shares the searing details of a miscarriage after an unplanned pregnancy in her 40s. In another chapter called “Carry That Weight,” Weiner writes about her nearly lifelong struggle with body acceptance. 

“You deprive yourself until you’re weak, faint with hunger, embarrassing yourself by drooling every time an Applebee’s commercial comes on,” she writes. “Then you cram whatever’s handy down your trough, and you don’t even taste it, and you eat more of it than you’d intended, and you hate yourself even more. Rinse, repeat.”

Ultimately, though, Weiner has found peace with her body—and her life. Her honesty, charm and buoyant spirit come through on every page of this hilarious, wise, putting-it-all-out-there book.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

I consider myself a bit of a Jennifer Weiner connoisseur. I’ve read all her books and short stories, watched her short-lived TV series “State of Georgia” and laughed at her live-tweeting during “The Bachelor.”
FictionComic Fiction

A hilarious and pivotal day in the life of an American everywoman

Review by Amy Scribner

Eleanor Flood is tired of being tired. She wakes up in her trendy Seattle neighborhood already counting down to bedtime. A former artist for a “Simpsons”-esque TV show, she is stumped professionally and stuck personally. “I’m looking worse by the day,” she laments. “I’m all jowly. My back is dry. My core strength is nonexistent. Really, I’m hanging by a thread.”

But, as she declares on the very first page, today will be different. She will play with her sweet son, Timby. She will radiate calm and go to yoga class. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe.

Reader, the day does not exactly go as planned. Timby fakes an illness to get picked up early from his tony private school (in a fun nod to Semple fans, he attends Galer Street School). Eleanor runs into an old colleague who brings some long-suppressed family secrets to the surface. And when she goes to surprise Joe at his office, his receptionist informs her that he is on vacation.

Eleanor spends her day unraveling the mystery of where Joe is spending his days, while also facing her hurtful childhood and estrangement from her beloved sister. She may not make it to yoga, but the day is a major turning point in Eleanor’s life, one in which she realizes she has to deal with her past to carve out a better future. 

Semple—the author, of course, of the incomparable Where’d You Go, Bernadette—is second to none in humorous fiction. Her heroines are deeply flawed but totally relatable, and Eleanor is no exception. Today Will Be Different is filled with transcendent moments of humanity, reminders that while we all can aspire to improve, sometimes it’s OK to just appreciate what is already in front of us.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Eleanor Flood is tired of being tired. She wakes up in her trendy Seattle neighborhood already counting down to bedtime. A former artist for a “Simpsons”-esque TV show, she is stumped professionally and stuck personally.
NonfictionBiography

FDR’s last years in office

Review by Amy Scribner

Plenty has been written about our 32nd president, who guided our nation to the New Deal and through World War II. But rarely has Franklin Delano Roosevelt been portrayed with such steely-eyed insight as in former New York Times executive editor and Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Lelyveld’s His Final Battle. It is a deeply revealing look at a famously enigmatic president, inaccessible at times even to his closest advisors and his own children. (His son James once said, “Of what was inside him, what really drove him, Father talked with no one.”) It also is a portrait of a master of foreign and domestic relations.

Lelyveld focuses on FDR’s final year and a half, when despite his failing health, he proved to be the nation’s best wartime leader. Lelyveld toggles between FDR’s personal life and political efforts, describing his “confounding, sometimes dazzling, ability to operate simultaneously on several planes as visionary, opportunist, and political schemer, as well as his readiness to test a hypothesis in politics like a scientist in a lab or an entrepreneur with a risk business plan daring to make a deal.”

Roosevelt was a master at carefully crafting his own image. It’s hard to imagine in this time of tweeting presidential candidates and chaotic campaigns, but reporters covering FDR showed a tremendous amount of restraint, never showing him in a wheelchair, to which he was mostly confined after a bout with polio in his 40s. He carried on an affair with Eleanor’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who was with him in Warm Springs, Georgia, when he died. This fact, too, was omitted from reports of the president’s death.

His Final Battle is not by any means a World War II or FDR primer. Lelyveld clearly assumes his readers have some historical knowledge. He dives right in to FDR’s final years—from meetings with Stalin and Churchill to wrestling with whether to run for a fourth term—with little precursor. But it’s a masterful study of a masterful politician, a fresh look at one of the most beloved and complex of presidents.

Plenty has been written about our 32nd president, who guided our nation to the New Deal and through World War II. But rarely has Franklin Delano Roosevelt been portrayed with such steely-eyed insight as in former New York Times executive editor and Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Lelyveld’s His Final Battle. It is a deeply revealing look at a famously enigmatic president, inaccessible at times even to his closest advisors and his own children. (His son James once said, “Of what was inside him, what really drove him, Father talked with no one.”) It also is a portrait of a master of foreign and domestic relations.
FictionPopular Fiction

A single parent surviving San Francisco

Review by Amy Scribner

Single mom Mele is raising her 2-year-old daughter in San Francisco. She has a pack of funny, irreverent friends and a flexible blogging gig that allows her to hang out with said friends and their kids. 

The only hiccup in her otherwise great life? The father of her child is marrying someone else: a gorgeous woman who makes cheese in Petaluma.

“When he first told me about her I envisioned a country woman milking goats, her jeans pulled up to her nipples, but she isn’t like that at all,” says Mele. “She has a perfect ponytail, big teeth, and high cheekbones—that alien look of models. She knows how to sail, make cheese, ride horses, and she’s marrying the man I thought I’d be with for the rest of my life.” 

Hemmings, who first made her mark with 2007’s The Descendants, is a superbly confident and inventive writer. Much of Mele’s story is told through her application for a cookbook-writing contest, a surprisingly effective construct through which she tells stories about her friends and comes up with recipes inspired by their tales. The fact that the contest is sponsored by the San Francisco Mothers’ Club also allows for plenty of humor in Mele’s no-holds-barred responses.

Does your husband cook? reads one question. How do you divvy up the responsibilities?

“Way to rub it in my face, you sick, kitten-heel wearing bitches,” Mele replies.

When her baby daddy invites her to his wedding, Mele asks her friend Henry, a stay-at-home dad, to be her date. Henry’s marriage is failing, and Mele suspects her innocent invitation has the potential to turn into something much more. But is she ready to move on from the one she thought was The One?

How to Party with an Infant is hilarious. Hemmings is brutally honest about the pain and pleasure of parenting in the 21st century, when analyzing other parents’ choices—from schools to snacks—has become a favorite pastime. She also reinforces the universal truth that non-judgmental, imperfect, supportive and slightly boozy friends are the best antidote to the parenting wars.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Single mom Mele is raising her 2-year-old daughter in San Francisco. She has a pack of funny, irreverent friends and a flexible blogging gig that allows her to hang out with said friends and their kids.
NonfictionSelf-Help

Get your life right

Review by Amy Scribner

If you gravitate toward wholesome, “Dear Abby”-style advice, steer clear of Heather Havrilesky. But if profound, profane wisdom is your jam, this book is for you.

How to Be a Person in the World compiles some of Havrilesky’s best columns from “Ask Polly,” which ran first on quirky website The Awl, then on New York magazine’s The Cut. It also includes a lot of fresh material. Saying that Havrilesky has a way with words is like saying Marilyn Monroe liked diamonds. Havrilesky doesn’t just write—she dances with the words, building empathetic responses that can’t be classified as just advice columns. They are more keen observations of human behavior.

“When you spend your days staring at bony teenagers in tall boots and touching soft things that cost more than your monthly salary, it eats away at your soul like a hungry little demon-rabbit,” she writes to a woman working in fashion who feels miserable and shallow. 

“Repeat after me, WB: ‘I will not lose myself. I can earn money and create art, too. I can befriend Buddhists and women in $300 heels. I am not a one-dimensional, angry human with boundary issues, like those others who get so fixated on being ONE THING AND NOTHING ELSE.’”

It was hard to choose a favorite quote, mostly because she’s so pithy but also because so many of the quotes I loved in this book included a string of F words. 

The contents are divided into sections with titles such as Flaws Become You and Weepiness is Next to Godliness, each prefaced by a deadpan comic strip. 

Whether she’s tackling alcoholism, STDs or deadbeat boyfriends, Havrilesky is a pure joy to read. She’s the tough-love friend who tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. As she tells one advice seeker, “This is your moment. Seize your moment, goddamn it!”

 

This article was originally published in the July 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you gravitate toward wholesome, “Dear Abby”-style advice, steer clear of Heather Havrilesky. But if profound, profane wisdom is your jam, this book is for you.
NonfictionMemoir

Learning to carpe diem

Review by Amy Scribner

Ann Patty was at loose ends after being forced into early retirement from her high-powered job in book publishing. It was 2008, the recession was grinding everything to a halt, and suddenly Patty, the editor of the bestselling Life of Pi, was rattling around her home in upstate New York. She joined Match.com, read piles of books and weeded her garden. But something was missing from this new life.

“I took on more and more uninspiring freelance work and honed my gourmet cooking skills,” she writes in her lovely new memoir, Living with a Dead Language. “With the companionship of too many glasses of wine, I could while away hours comparing recipes, shopping, and preparing meals. . . .  I gained ten pounds.”

Worried that she would become “a drunk, a bore, a depressive,” Patty decides to study Latin at nearby Vassar College. She is the oldest student—by far—and her classmates don’t quite know what to make of her, mostly choosing instead to gaze at their cellphones until class starts. But slowly, Patty decodes the language and learns some things about herself in the process.

Look, I know what you’re thinking: a book about a retiree studying Latin in Poughkeepsie. Titillating! But Patty brings humor and clarity to her storytelling, and she paints a vivid picture of her hours toiling in a musty college classroom. Anyone who loves words and language will recognize him or herself in these pages. Through the study of a dead language, she makes peace with her past and finds purpose in this next phase of her life.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ann Patty was at loose ends after being forced into early retirement from her high-powered job in book publishing. It was 2008, the recession was grinding everything to a halt, and suddenly Patty, the editor of the bestselling Life of Pi, was rattling around her home in upstate New York. She joined Match.com, read piles of books and weeded her garden. But something was missing from this new life.

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