Jenny McPhee

If you like Edith Piaf, Danielle Darrieux, Carla Bruni, you will love my friend Alba's stunning voice, gorgeous piano playing, and iridescent lyrics. Have a listen here and then come along, if you happen to be on this side of the pond, to hear her live on March 24 at 8:00 at The Paradise, 19 Kilburn Lane, …

Continue reading "Alba: Dans Les Rues de Paris"

    Click on Clarice's photo for link to Bookslut.  

Photo courtesy of a young friend and her phone

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The Isolated Protagonist: Three Novels by Orhan Pamuk, Jenny McPhee, and Laura Stevenson by Emily Grosholz THE PROTAGONISTS OF THESE THREE RECENT NOVELS are people who live in the periphery of society, and so seem also to live on the outskirts of their own lives, observing, commenting, never really engaging---with one exception. Though there is …

Continue reading "In Good Company at The Hudson Review"

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In my pantheon of favorite writers, Clarice Lispector is right there at the top.  She's a writer, like Muriel Spark or Thomas Bernhard, who always make me ask when reading their work: Is this allowed? Sometimes her prose has such power I am made to wonder if I have the strength and stability to keep reading. Championed by Elizabeth Bishop …

Continue reading "Two Stories by Clarice Lispector Translated by Elizabeth Bishop"

When film blogger extraodinaire Self-Styled Siren heard that Dino De Laurentiis had died on Wednesday, November 10, 2010 she immediately thought of the above clip from Bitter Rice--one of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema. De Laurentiis produced this film starring his bride-to-be Silvana Mangano. It was while viewing Bitter Rice for the first time that a tiny seed of inspiration was …

Continue reading "Dino De Laurentiis, Silvana Mangano, Lalli Kamenetsky, and My Novel"