Her entry begins:In the weeks before Autobiography came out, Carlene Bauer’s debut novel, Frances and Bernard, kept popping up on my radar; the other day when I was at the Strand, skulking around the “S” aisle, I picked up a copy. It’s a marvel of a book – concise, thoughtful, elegant, heartbreaking. She tells the story of a complex relationship between a poet and a fiction writer in the early 1960’s, and she does the whole thing through letters. The characters are loosely based on Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell, so Bauer is essentially conjuring up the voices of two exceptional minds – the miracle is that she pulls it off, and seamlessly. I was deeply impressed by...[read on]About Autobiography of Us, from the publisher:
A gripping debut novel about friendship, loss and love; a confession of what passed between two women who met as girls in 1960s Pasadena, CaliforniaLearn more about the book and author at Aria Beth Sloss's website.
Coming of age in the patrician neighborhood of Pasadena, California during the 1960s, Rebecca Madden and her beautiful, reckless friend Alex dream oflives beyond their mothers' narrow expectations. Their struggle to define themselves against the backdrop of an American cultural revolution unites them early on, until one sweltering evening the summer before their last year of college, when a single act of betrayal changes everything. Decades later, Rebecca’s haunting meditation on the past reveals the truth about that night, the years that followed, and the friendship that shaped her.
Autobiography of Us is an achingly beautiful portrait of a decades-long bond. A rare and powerful glimpse into the lives of two women caught between repression and revolution, it casts new light on the sacrifices, struggles, victories and defeats of a generation.
Writers Read: Aria Beth Sloss.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
