by Margot Miller (2003)
"The fiction of French postcolonial writer Paule Constant is remarkable in its lurid and disturbing portrayals of female characters suffering in profoundly oppressive "colonizing" circumstances. In In Search of Shelter, Margot Miller skillfully synthesizes Karen Horney's model of submission, aggression, and withdrawal; Jean Baker Miller's concept of relational being; Julia Kristeva's idea of psychic space; and Kelly Oliver's notions on social support to analyze Constant's work. Miller's close reading also brings to light previously unnoticed references that illuminate the characters' psychological realities, revealing Constant's nuanced treatment of violence through language, her implicit understanding of the intersections of interpersonal and cognitive psychology as well as of mythological and cultural awareness, in both literature and lived experience. In introducing Paule Constant's work to an English-speaking audience, Miller discovers innovative new ways of reading these and other works of fiction."--BOOK JACKET.
Josh Rolnick
Pulp and Paper captures lightning in a bottle, excavating the smallest steps people take to move beyond grief, heartbreak, and failure{u2014}conjuring the subtle, fragile moments when people are not yet whole, but no longer quite as broken. -- Amazon.com.
Suzanne Juhasz
Passionate readers know who they are and since they always recognize one another, they will immediately identify Suzanne Juhasz as one of their own. Reading from the Heart is an engrossing exploration of the needs and desires that lead to a reading "habit." Part paean to the reading life, part autobiography, it shows that reading and "real life" are not warring enterprises but interrelated experiences, each composed of need and fantasy, yearning and satisfaction. As every reading woman knows, novels are not escapes from reality but spaces of the possible, where they can experiment with other ways of feeling and being. Interweaving the story of her journey to self-discovery with her girlhood infatuation with Little Women, her adolescent immersion in Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and her adult experiences reading Gloria Naylor's Mama Day and Isabel Miller's famous lesbian novel Patience and Sarah, Juhasz convincingly demonstrates that the "romance" plot of finding, losing, and regaining true love is as much about identity as it is about love. And she makes the provocative argument that women's fantasy of true love is a version of mother love, in which the hero of a novel offers the unconditional, maternal acceptance that enables the heroine to develop an authentic self. Like Mary Catherine Bateson's Composing a Life and Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life, Reading from the Heart is a personal book that transcends the purely personal. It will be a touchstone for women who love to read and believe that reading can change their lives.
John Murray
In this remarkably assured debut collection, doctors, scientists, explorers, and collectors face the emotional battles of love, loss, and obsession in exotic locations.
Ron McLarty
This debut novel is the story of Smithson Ide who grieves the death of his parents by getting on a Raleigh bicycle in his funeral suit and pedalling across America.