From the category archives:

Reviews

Let the Great World Spin; Colum McCann, 2009

September 11, 2011

The tragedy of 9/11 is not the loss of the Twin Towers, but of the people who died that day, there and in Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Towers, though, are a symbol of the various and myriad losses at and subsequent to that moment. After 9/11 people remembered Phillipe Petit and his walk between the [...]

Read the full article →

Algeria: Of Dreams and Assassins; Malika Mokeddem, 1995

August 20, 2011

My childhood and adolescence would have been a hellish and unending imprisonment without the marvelous complicity of this language that I read in [i.e., French]…. For me, the desire to write is very old; it dates from adolescence…. For me, writing is an existential need. For a woman it is the best means of affirming [...]

Read the full article →

Albania: The Accident; Ismail Kadare, 2008

August 19, 2011

Oh summer. Reading goes on, late at night, tucked into a day away, early in the morning, but between comings and goings, writing grants and writing lists, baking birthday cakes, organizing kids’ complex summer schedules, and all the rest that pours abundantly down upon us in the mad, brief abundant season of New England summer, [...]

Read the full article →

Peru: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter; Mario Vargas Llosa, 1977

June 4, 2011

Once again, of late, the quantity of books on the property has far exceeded the available shelf space, a dreadful and recurring problem. The books with no home make their way to the floor of my studio, spilling out in an ever-rising sea of books. Probably best to avoid flood metaphors in difficult times such [...]

Read the full article →

Read Around the World

May 20, 2011

Two things I’ve wanted for a long time came into my life this week, an electric kettle* and a world map shower curtain. Examining the latter is surprising (look how long and skinny the Red Sea is!), mystifying (just what, exactly, is going on down at the tip of South America?), and inspiring. Specifically, it [...]

Read the full article →

artist’s studio

April 12, 2011

Visit her here to commission a family portrait, buy a painting, browse and enjoy the beauty and tranquillity of the work.

Read the full article →

Ladurée (the remains of the pastry…)

April 10, 2011

Site très joli ici (kids would like it).

Read the full article →

Half Magic; Edward Eager, illustrated by N. M. Bodecker (1954)

April 5, 2011

When thinking about presents to bring to children I don’t see often enough, I tend to return to old favorites. Half Magic is one of these, the first of Edward Eager’s books, all beloved since my childhood and now beloved to my kids, all with memorable illustrations by N. M. Bodecker.
Modern children, subjected to some [...]

Read the full article →

flowers in winter (window ledge in the atom age)

February 10, 2011

Fresh flowers for weeks in winter for only a few dollars = forced narcissus bulbs = paper whites. Why? To remind us that under the earth all is not dead; spring will come, the grass will grow, flowers will bloom again. Find the bulbs at florists, garden and farm supply stores, sometimes even at the [...]

Read the full article →

Life, death, and French

February 2, 2011

A month seems long enough to be silent, a strange month turning on the multifarious spokes of the wheel of life. Death, coming to people we think too young to die—we, with our secret hopes of long, fulfilling lives, of seeing our grandchildren and great-grandchildren be born. And birth, which can come earlier than it [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →