Book World: Vera bears witness to the lives ruined by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post
March 8, 2021
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- - - For fifteen years I d been waiting for a catastrophe greater than my birth, says the eponymous protagonist of Carol Edgarian s new novel Vera. The quake gave it to me. By the quake Vera means the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Vera, at 15, feels like most things revolve around her experience, including this disaster. She has a flair for the dramatic. Brought up by Swedish widow Morie (a diminutive for mor, or mother) alongside her stepsister Pie (for Piper), Vera has always known that her biological mother is notorious brothelkeeper Madame Rose, with whom she has intermittent contact.
Book World: 10 books to read in March
Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post
March 2, 2021
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Festival Days/The Hill We Climb/The Code BreakerLittleBrown/Viking/Simon and Schuster - handout
Start your reading engines early this month, because this month s book picks have heft - in number of pages, yes, but also in terms of thought and inquiry. Novelists consider the nature of borders and how substances (including oil and drugs) corrupt; journalists examine health care, feminism, genetics; and a young but already accomplished poet releases her first book. The Soul of a Woman, by Isabel Allende (March 2) When I say I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating, declares the acclaimed Chilean journalist, novelist and activist in this memoir that reflects on her upbringing - she was raised with her two sisters by a single mother - while pondering women s nature and women s needs.
Book World: Melissa Broder s Milk Fed is a delectable exploration of physical and emotional hunger
Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post
Feb. 9, 2021
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Melissa Broder s delectable new Milk Fed, like The Pisces, her 2011 debut about a merman, contains deliciously steamy sex scenes. In Milk Fed, those scenes get tough competition from lusciously over-the-top food scenes, involving protagonist Rachel devouring everything from convenience-store nachos (polishing them off while still in line) to a frozen-yogurt concoction called The Peppermint Plotz to a Shabbos meal of long-simmered cholent.
Twenty-four-year-old Rachel, who works at a Hollywood talent agency, wasn t always this way. Her mother, obsessed with thinness, was oblivious to that obsession s effects on her daughter. As a teenager, when Rachel confesses that she thinks she has an eating disorder, her mother responds: Anorexics are much skinnier than you. Adult Rachel measures out her d