What is Gae Polisner reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Gae Polisner, author of The Summer of Letting Go.

Her entry begins:

I am literally today just about to finish Matthew Quick’s terrific Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock. I’m embarrassed to admit it’s my first Matthew Quick book (since I hear they are all pretty stellar), which is reason number one why I’m reading it. Besides that, the theme of a teen boy with plans, on the day of his 18th birthday, to kill his former best friend them himself, resonated with me against the backdrop of the spate of recent school shootings. What would bring a kid to feel so hopeless and distraught? What might bring him back from the brink? Hope? Questions we ...[read on]

About  The Summer of Letting Go, from the publisher:

Just when everything seems to be going wrong, hope—and love—can appear in the most unexpected places.

Summer has begun, the beach beckons—and Francesca Schnell is going nowhere. Four years ago, Francesca’s little brother, Simon, drowned, and Francesca’s the one who should have been watching. Now Francesca is about to turn sixteen, but guilt keeps her stuck in the past. Meanwhile, her best friend, Lisette, is moving on—most recently with the boy Francesca wants but can’t have. At loose ends, Francesca trails her father, who may be having an affair, to the local country club. There she meets four-year-old Frankie Sky, a little boy who bears an almost eerie resemblance to Simon, and Francesca begins to wonder if it’s possible Frankie could be his reincarnation. Knowing Frankie leads Francesca to places she thought she’d never dare to go—and it begins to seem possible to forgive herself, grow up, and even fall in love, whether or not she solves the riddle of Frankie Sky.

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--Marshal Zeringue