I first read this book 30 years ago. It was a big influence on me as a writer, and in terms of my fascination with old movies and Hollywood. Coming back to it much later, I still find it quite enchanting. The main character is partially based on Marilyn Monroe - same wretched childhood, same marr...
In Doris Grumbach's memoir of the year she turned 70 (1988), we step largely into the life of her mind. She is indeed, very cerebral, contemplative and solitary. She is a great women of letters. She corresponds with many other writers and learned people. When this thoughtful memoir starts, oh, h...
Caroline McClaren has been asked to give permanent record to the life of the fictional famous composer, and her long-deceased husband, Robert McClaren. Instead she decides ".... to write this account because, long as my life has been, it has given me no opportunity before this to say what I wish ...
The Magician's Girl tells a story of three New York women who meet at Barnard in the late 1930s and fulfill their separate destinies from the 1940s to 1978. Minna Grant, a fanatical swimmer in her youth, becomes a professor of history. Liz Becker, child of Greenich Village boheimian parents, achi...
A New York Times Notable Book Faced with a rare opportunity to experiment with solitude, Doris Grumbach decided to live in her coastal Maine home without speaking to anyone for fifty days. The result is a beautiful meditation about what it means to write, to be alone, and to come to terms with m...
There are no more profound influences on our lives than those we choose to love and those who choose to love us. Doris Grumbach's frank and moving new novel, The Book of Knowledge, illustrates this truth as it plays out in the lives of four characters whose departures from the sexual norm will al...
This was a book I picked up on a whim at the library and really enjoyed. Majority of the enjoyment came from the fact that it was based on the real historical figures, two women who chose to defy the societal norms of mid to late 1700s and early 1800s and make their own lives according to their o...
This is only the second Grumbach book I've read, but it certainly won't be the last. I was captivated by another of her memoirs, COMING INTO THE END ZONE, so much so that I couldn't wait to read the next, this book. I was not disappointed. If you are a reader, a person who cherishes good writing,...
He is collecting juvenilia from contemporary writers. In fact, he wants the first thing they have ever written, if they have a copy of it. He asks me to contribute. I think back to my terrible first story which I entered in a contest held every year (back in the early 1930s, that is) for New York...