Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, essays, and poems. Please use the links or site menu to go to the HOME PAGE; learn about her NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, MEMOIR, ESSAYS, and POEMS; find interesting facts in BEHIND THE STORY; read REFLECTIONS on writing; check NEWS for updates on publications and related events; see REVIEWS; learn about her END-OF-LIFE DOULA credentials and services; and CONTACT US to send webmail.
When Spanish flu cases spiked in 1918, then as now, revelers were warned not to trade their health-saving masks for Halloween masks. Street celebrations and indoor parties were prohibited. People were reminded that dancing was nonessential and that blowing horns spread germs and disrupted the sleep of the sick. State and city bans may have curtailed those seeking treats, but the number of tricks rose. Dallas police, for example, reported overturned bread boxes, an absconded horse, and a stolen piano. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore (1917-1925), a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family during WWI (see NOVELS).
Revelers defied Halloween prohibitions during 1918 Spanish flu pandemicGenerations of immigrant family in conflict during WWI
I’m thrilled by this thoughtful interview about my writing in general, and my newest novel The Great Stork Derby, by author and blogger Roz Morris. Read the interview to learn how I became a writer and how my fiction is connected to my work as a developmental psychologist and visual artist. Read more about The Great Stork Derby in NOVELS.
Based on a bizarre but true event in Toronto history
The Great Stork Derby is delivered (released) today. A tale of obsession and forgiveness, based on real events. Toronto, 1926. A husband pressures his wife to have many babies to win a large cash prize. Now old and widowed, can a bad father redeem himself with his grown children? More at NOVELS. Order online or at your favorite bookstore. Goodreads and Amazon reviews appreciated. Many thanks.
My Goodreads and Amazon review of Tender Cuts by Jayne Martin (Rating 5) – An Astonishing Range of Subjects and Emotions. The collected vignettes in Tender Cuts by Jane Martin cover an astonishing range of subjects and emotions. Many are mournful, depicting lives filled with bitter regret. In others, protagonists exact sweet revenge against those who have hurt or disappointed them. Tales that flow with melancholy break your heart, while quick jabs break the rhythm of your breathing. Each vignette is economical without being skimpy. After reading one, you never want more or wish for less. For example, in “Stepping Out,” Martin animates a coat rack and sums up a woman’s life in one finely observed paragraph. The success of brevity lies in finding a single word or phrase that captures a larger truth. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I appreciated Martin’s skill at finding le mot juste or succinct combination of words that manage to encapsulate multitudes. Together, the short pieces in this compact book comprise a full and satisfying meal. Readers won’t go away hungry after consuming these tender cuts, and the satisfactions of dining on a memorable meal will endure.
Economical without being skimpyWhy writers read: “What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world.” – Anne Lamott
I’ll be launching my new novel, The Great Stork Derby at Booksweet Bookstore, 1729 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan on Friday, November 5, 2021 at 7:30 PM Eastern Time. Visit the event website to learn about my reading and the three other authors who will join me. The event is free but registration is required and capacity is limited due to COVID-19 restrictions. To attend, please register ASAP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/making-worlds-an-evening-with-local-authors-booksweet-tickets-190624913247?aff=ebdssbdestsearch. The Great Stork Derby, based on a bizarre chapter in Toronto’s history, asks whether an overbearing father deserves the chance to make amends with his alienated offspring. Widower Emm Benbow, who 50 years ago pressured his late wife to win a contest by having many babies, must now move in with one of his many children or go to a dreaded old age home. As he lives with each child in turn, Emm discovers that the true value of fatherhood is not measured in big prizes, but in small rewards. Read more about the book in NOVELS.
The Great Stork Derby will be delivered on October 19, 2021; launch event November 5, 2021
My Goodreads and Amazon review of Wayward: A Novel by Dana Spiotta (Rating 4) – A Wayward Woman Finds a Way Forward. Samantha (Sam) Raymond, the protagonist of Dana Spiotta’s novel Wayward, is a well-to-do white woman whose reaction to going through menopause is extreme and yet entirely natural and predictable. Rarely do novels feature women in their fifties going through “the change,” and more rarely do they receive the attention Spiotta lavishes on Sam: ferocious and gentle, serious and funny, perplexed and insightful. Set in the aftermath of Trumps’ election, Sam’s own upheaval is contemporaneous with the country’s dislocation. She responds by impulsively buying a crumbling old house in a questionable area of downtown Syracuse, and leaving her kind husband and distancing teenage daughter in the suburbs. Sam fixes it up the house while seeking to repair herself and the world. Sam’s thoughts often dwell on her dying mother and growing daughter. As an author myself, who often writes about complex family relationships (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I was impressed by Spiotta’s ability to capture the push-pull of the mother-daughter bond. My only criticism of the book is that the social commentaries — the “smart” ruminations Spiotta is known for — sometimes became trite and tedious. I was eager to get back to Sam’s story. Likewise, the few sections written from her daughter’s point of view were distracting. What resonated was the honesty of Sam’s position, a middle-aged white woman looking for meaning in her own life and the national psyche. She doesn’t find a pathway to the latter, but in the continuity of women, from grandmother to mother to daughter, the wayward Sam finds a way forward for herself.
Portrait of an arty type as a middle-aged womanWhy writers read: “Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change.” – Lloyd Alexander
Simchat Torah, “Rejoicing with the Torah,” is a one-day Jewish holiday which this year begins at sundown on 28 September 2021 (23 Tishrei 5782). The celebration marks the conclusion of the annual cycle of reading Torah (the Five Books of Moses in the Old Testament) and the beginning of a new cycle. In one breath, we read of the death of the great prophet Moses at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy. The Torah scroll is rewound, often held aloft and danced with, and in the next breath, we read how the world is born in the creation story that opens the Book of Genesis. The holiday falls days after the Jewish High Holy Days, when Jews, after repenting and “returning” to acts of goodness, begin a new year with a clean slate. Simchat Torah, both literally and symbolically, marks this new start. As the weeks unfold, we read — as if for the first time — the story of Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, the arrival of the patriarchs and matriarchs in The Land, the Exodus of The People from Egypt following 430 years of slavery, receiving the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, and the perilous forty-year journey through the desert as we return to The Land. Moses again dies, but earth, sky, and sea are created anew. Children love to have their favorite books reread to them. Some adults reread books. Not me. I read a book once, reflect on it, and later recall characters and events that left an impression. But with so many other books on my reading list, and new ones added all the time, I don’t pick it up again. Torah is the exception. I am about to embark on my thirty-second reading of “The Book.” With each cycle, a story I’ve never read before awaits me, evoking different reactions and insights. For the first time, I am reassessing the wisdom of those who reread other books. Might I follow their example? Books don’t change, but readers do. Now in my mid-seventies, what would I make of the novels I read in my twenties? Surely, the story would not be the same. More thoughts about reading and writing at REFLECTIONS.
Torah is a circle; it has no beginning or endWhy writers read: “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” – Confucius
In answer to a question about roles he was disappointed not to get, actor LeVar Burton said “That which is mine, no one can take away from me. That which is not for me, no amount of wishing or stamping my feet will make it so” (“LeVar Burton’s Quest to Succeed Alex Trebek” by David Marchese, The New York Times Magazine, 06/25/21). Writers should keep that wisdom in mind when submissions are declined. The work we’ve published is ours to own. The work that’s turned down may never achieve print. But unlike actors, for whom rejection means losing the opportunity to create that role, writers can always say they created that manuscript, whether or not someone else is inclined to publish it. More thoughts about writing at REFLECTIONS.
Rejection can’t steal your achievementsWhy writers write: “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” – Ernest Hemingway
My Goodreads and Amazon review of Careless Love by Steve Zettler (Rated 5) – A Carefully Constructed Tale. Imagine being told by your mother as she confronts the end of her life that the person you thought was your father was not the man half responsible for beginning yours. (Not a spoiler; readers learn this at the novel’s outset.) With little to go on, the narrator of Steve Zettler’s carefully constructed novel Careless Love sets out to discover not only who his real father was, but also the identity of the man who killed him. His dogged pursuit uncovers a cast of often unsavory, but always intriguing, characters. Set in Hawaii, the sordidness of the lowlifes contrasts sharply with the pampered lives of the privileged guests at the beach getaway where Grace and Lee, the narrator’s parents, have each retreated to escape their respective demons. Likewise, the flashbacks to the grim realities of the war in Vietnam are in stark contrast to the sweet romance between these central characters. The detective work brings to mind an absorbing film noir production. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Zettler’s deft blend of plot and personality in this entertaining and revelatory tale.
Film noir on the pageWhy writers read: “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” – Joyce Carol Oates
My Goodreads and Amazon review of Something Wild by Hanna Halperin (Rated 5) – Scary, Scarring, and Salving. Hanna Halperin’s novel Something Wild is about female desire and the fraught relationship between women and men, but mostly about the complex connections between women: mothers and daughters, and sisters. If the book has a flaw, it’s that the men are one dimensional. Yet, in a sense, these stereotypical men only highlight how complex and worthy the women are. Halperin questions what draws them close, what drives them apart, and what ultimately pulls them back together. Sisters Tanya and Nessa, close as children, became distanced from each other after a traumatic sexual encounter as teenagers. As adults, they discover that their stepfather Jesse is abusing their mother Lorraine. Sex and violence — something wild — simmer below the surface of every page and, inevitably, erupt. Yet, despite these big events, the book’s impact lies in its small moments: a big sister showing her little sister how to insert a tampon; the women warming each other’s feet under a treasured blanket. Halperin throws rocks into the water, but waits to watch the ripples they generate. Not that the book lacks for plot — its momentum never flags— but it plumbs the depths rather skimming the surface. As a writer who also observes ripples rather than hurling rocks (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I appreciated her ability to linger, to wonder whether calm can ever be restored after a traumatic or tragic event. In this scary and scarring account, sisterly love is the salve that heals.
An unsparing look at domestic violence and family tiesWhy writers read: “A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.” – Franz Kafka