Tuesday, August 07, 2018

What is Liese O'Halloran Schwarz reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Liese O'Halloran Schwarz, author of The Possible World: A Novel.

One title she tagged:
I have just finished The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, a very good book about the second "lost generation” (gay men in the eighties) and what the AIDS crisis stole from the world. She did a creditable job of depicting that time, which of course I remember quite well. It’s a bit of a milestone, isn't it, when an author needs to do massive research in order to write a story set in one’s own youth? Le sigh. However, one must consider the alternative to growing older — Makkai’s book certainly provides perspective about...[read on]
About The Possible World, from the publisher:
A richly compelling and deeply moving novel that traces the converging lives of a young boy who witnesses a brutal murder, the doctor who tends to him, and an elderly woman guarding her long buried past.

It seems like just another night shift for Lucy, an overworked ER physician in Providence, Rhode Island, until six-year-old Ben is brought in as the sole survivor from a horrifying crime scene. He’s traumatized and wordless; everything he knows has been taken from him in an afternoon. It’s not clear what he saw, or what he remembers.

Lucy, who’s grappling with a personal upheaval of her own, feels a profound, unexpected connection to the little boy. She wants to help him…but will recovering his memory heal him, or damage him further?

Across town, Clare will soon be turning one hundred years old. She has long believed that the lifetime of secrets she’s been keeping don’t matter to anyone anymore, but a surprising encounter makes her realize that the time has come to tell her story.

As Ben, Lucy, and Clare struggle to confront the events that shattered their lives, something stronger than fate is working to bring them together.

An expertly stitched story that spans nearly a century—from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War era and into the present—The Possible World is a captivating novel about the complicated ways our pasts shape our identities, the power of maternal love, the loneliness born out of loss, and how timeless bonds can help us triumph over grief.
Visit Liese O'Halloran Schwarz's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Possible World.

Writers Read: Liese O'Halloran Schwarz.

--Marshal Zeringue