Category: Giveaways

*** Winners selected! Congratulations to Evann in Lake Tapps, Wash., and Simone in Bloomfield, N.J.! ***

“My father proposed to my mother at gunpoint when she was nineteen, and knowing that she was already pregnant with a dead man’s child, she accepted.”

How can you read that first sentence and not read on? This tiny tidbit of Gina Sorell’s debut novel Mothers and Other Strangers gripped me when I first read it nine months ago and kept me in anticipation until the book finally came out in May — after which I devoured it in two days!

The story follows Elsie, a thirty-something woman in Los Angeles who learns her estranged mother — a beautiful, self-absorbed, and secretive parent — has died. So Elsie goes on a journey to discover the true story of her mother — a story that takes her all over the world, from Los Angeles to Toronto to Paris to Cape Town.

This novel was especially poignant for me because I grew up in three different continents too — and am estranged from my mother. The similarities between my life and Elsie’s end there though. What I found most compelling in Mothers and Other Strangers is the complex tension of emotions Elsie has about her mother: A mother who tells fabulous stories of her past, not a word of which may be true. A mother whose glamour and beauty Elsie craves, but hates constantly competing against. A mother whose approval Elsie desperately seeks, yet whose cold narcissism Elsie finds repellent.

But Mothers and Other Strangers covers much more ground than just the mother-daughter relationship, touching on everything from the financially predatory nature of spiritual cults (the mother belonged to one) to the punishing demands of creative ambition (Elsie is a dancer). Part psychological thriller, part coming-of-age story, and part redemption narrative, the book does sometimes feel like it’s trying to do too many things as it meanders into a whole range of varied hot topics — eating disorders, fertility treatments, rape, mental illness, Jewish identity, you name it — before suddenly coming to the end with a hurried wrapup. Still, the energy of the plot and the ambitious scope of the story made this novel a real page-turner.

I’m excited to be partnering with Prospect Park Books to give away TWO copies of Mothers and Other Strangers to my readers! All current email subscribers will be automatically entered to win one copy. Subscribe now if you’re not yet getting my occasional newsletters.

For a second chance to win, comment on this post below with your mother’s name. The giveaway closes August 31, 2017 at 11:59 pm PST.

Come back mid-month to read a Five Firsts interview with Gina Sorell.

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Calin in Los Angeles! ***

The first time saw Dana Johnson was on a panel at Skylight Books. I can’t remember what the panel was actually about, but I remember clearly what Dana said about her MFA experience — that she didn’t go right out of college, she waited a while until she was really hungry, ready. Then during her years at Indiana University, she wrote the stories in her first collection, Break Any Woman Down, winner of the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what I did, which was go to grad school at USC straight out of college and use the time as a sort of prolonged adolescence — the totally unproductive kind with lots of flailing around and remarkably little writing.

If only I’d waited to go to USC until Dana started teaching there! Then I’d have been the recipient of her sage advice — though whether or not I would have done anything with it at that point, who knows.

That said, everything’s turned out fine —

But back to Dana.  Break Any Woman Down is a complex and provocative collection of short stories, often starring characters in the margins of society.  A black stripper tries to figure out what she wants in her relationship with a controlling white porn star. A woman defiantly goes to bars alone, over her daughter’s protests. They’re stories of power and acquiescence, stubbornness and change — all cutting across lines of race, class, and gender.

My favorite story is the first one, “Melvin in the Sixth Grade.” Avery, a young black girl whose family just moved from South L.A. to West Covina to get away from the gangs, becomes friends with a white boy called Melvin. He too’s new to town, and with his bell bottoms and Oklahoma drawl, doesn’t fit in. When Melvin gets in a fight, Avery’s loyalty is tested — with heartbreaking consequences.

This story just tackles so much — from the petty allegiances of grade school and the giddiness of childhood crushes to the casual racism absorbed by children as a matter of course and the brutal dislocation that comes from shifting social classes. What Dana reveals about education is truly thought-provoking — how the learning of standard English, even the “correct” pronunciation of words, can be a sociocultural marker that connects and divides, confers privilege as well as exiles us from those we’re closest to.

Enter your email below for a chance to win a free copy of Break Any Woman Down. Already signed up for my newsletter? Then you’re already entered! US addresses only; giveaway ends July 31 at 11:59 pm.

Come back mid-month to read a Five Firsts interview with Dana Johnson.