What is Fran Hawthorne reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Fran Hawthorne, author of The Heirs.

Her entry begins:

I belong to three book clubs. Plus, I review fiction for the New York Journal of Books. Of course I want to read my friends’ newest oeuvres. And I always try to read books about the Holocaust, Poland, and other topics related to my novel The Heirs and also to the new novel I’m working on –- In short, I can hardly remember the book I read two books ago.

Luckily, I do remember some of the best:

I recently reviewed Gone So Long -- the story of a father’s attempt to reconcile with his long-estranged daughter after he’s been imprisoned for murdering her mother -- by the National Book Award finalist Andre Dubus III. To quote my own review: “Gone So Long has everything a novel could ask for: It’s a literary page-turner that explores the grit and pain of working class lives through complex personalities and...[read on]

About The Heirs, from the publisher:

After breaking her hip in a serious accident, Eleanor Ritter's mother, Rose, a Holocaust survivor now living in New Jersey, suddenly starts talking about her harrowing childhood in Poland and the taboo subjects she has refused to discuss for half a century -– even speaking in long-forgotten Polish. Around the same time, Eleanor learns that the parents of her nine-year-old son's soccer teammate, Tadek, are Catholics from Poland.

As Eleanor becomes fixated with digging into the histories of both her mother and Tadek’s family, her obsession strains her already difficult relationship with Rose, as well as her marriage to Nick, an IT technician who is himself caught up in preparing for the feared Y2K turn-of-the-millennium.

Eleanor starts flirting heavily with the soccer coach, ignoring her twelve-year-old daughter’s growing rebellion and her son’s misery when he becomes the team pariah for badly messing up several games. Meanwhile, the “sure-fire” tech stock that Eleanor bought behind Nick’s back is losing money. Even as her quest nourishes an odd friendship with Tadek’s mother, it forces Eleanor to face the unavoidable questions:

How many generations does guilt carry on? What did your grandparents do to my grandparents

Visit Fran Hawthorne's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Heirs.

The Page 69 Test: The Heirs.

Writers Read: Fran Hawthorne.

--Marshal Zeringue