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Life in Balance

September 28, 2021 By Laura Broadwell Filed Under: Books, Community, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading, Reader Excerpt Tagged With: books, parenting, Park Slope

Excerpted from Tick Tock: Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40 edited by Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin (Dottir Press, 2021

My daughter, Eleni, is twenty-one now, but I distinctly remember a day when she was two and I was desperately trying to convince her to put on her shoes so we could go out to play. Eleni was running around distractedly and wouldn’t listen, while my mother, then seventy-five, was repeatedly asking me unrelated questions—something about a neighbor and what we would like for dinner. As I answered my mother’s questions, she asked them again because she was hard of hearing. For what seemed to be an eternity, I found myself caught in a cycle of speaking louder and louder to a two-year-old who wouldn’t listen and to a seventy-five-year-old who couldn’t hear. To a bystander, the scene may have seemed comical, but I was not amused. 

In retrospect, that particular day was golden. The sun was shining, my father—also seventy-five—was out for a run, and my mother was still able to cook the foods of her native Greece. Though I was an exhausted, older single mother, I found immense joy in (eventually) taking my daughter out to play, and, as an only child, I reveled in the fact that my parents had finally been granted a grandchild. My family now felt whole and complete. 

In a few years’ time, things would change. 

“Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a mother; and as I crept toward forty and remained unmarried, this dream, this ambition, didn’t fade. Then when I was forty-one, a confluence of factors arose that made motherhood seem possible.”

Living in an unusually sizable apartment in Brooklyn, I had a steady job that I loved, supportive parents and friends who resided near my home, and a surprising ally in the Chinese government. Though things have changed since, there existed a window of time, a fortuitous opening, when the Chinese government allowed a single woman over forty to adopt a healthy infant—in most cases, a baby girl. (For me this was a bonus, since I intended to raise a child on my own.) On top of that, the adoption process in China was fairly straightforward; and with some luck, it appeared I could be in China within eighteen months, a new mother to a baby daughter. After much thought and reasonable trepidation, I decided to pursue this option. 

On August 16, 1999, I arrived at a dimly lit registrar’s office in central China, where I was handed an eight-month-old baby. At the age of forty-two, I suddenly became a first-time mother. I named my daughter Eleni in honor of my own mother, who had waited patiently for her first and only grandchild. Then nine days later, we flew home to New York, where my parents and friends greeted us at the airport. Eleni and I were set to begin our new life together. 

Our first two years in Brooklyn passed quickly. Eleni was a happy child, a curious child, a child who never slept. By extension, I was always exhausted, holding down a full-time job, caring for my daughter, having few spare moments to myself. But as an older mother, I viewed this juggling act and ever-present fatigue as a small price to pay for the joy of raising a child. As a parent over forty, I’d had countless years of “me time,” during which I could travel, see friends, build a career. So spending a Saturday afternoon with my parents and Eleni was more than enough to make me happy. Having my mother prepare Greek meals and bring them to our house, or seeing my dad play so energetically in the park with my daughter, fulfilled me. I was grateful for my job, grateful to reside in a neighborhood with other adoptive families and little girls from China, and grateful for the multicultural city in which I lived. By some divine stroke of luck, everything seemed in order. 

But as it happens, the best-laid plans often go awry. On September 11, 2001, when Eleni was almost three, the World Trade Center was hit by terrorists, bringing our city to its knees. Several weeks later, the magazine at which I’d worked for nearly a decade folded, citing a consistent loss of revenue. Then, in the spring of 2004, my seventy-nine-year-old father—the bedrock of our family, a man with boundless energy—was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer. How supremely unfair it felt that a man who had valued his health and had so much to live for would be struck with such a fatal illness. Within six months of his diagnosis, my father died, leaving me with countless business affairs to look after, a broken heart, and a mother and daughter who were beyond bereaved. 

Eleni was five, almost six, when her grandpa died, so it was hard for her to comprehend how this vibrant man had left us. On the playground at school, Eleni would look up at the sky and see her grandfather’s wispy, white hair in the cloud formation above her. In class, she described his spirit as coming to her “like a wind,” helping her with her math problems. My dad was athletic, so in tribute to him, Eleni learned to play soccer and tennis. She was fast on her feet and adopted my father’s work ethic. 

My mother, on the other hand, was seventy-nine when her husband died. For years, her health had been faltering, first with coronary bypass surgery in her early fifties, then later with various issues causing memory loss and pain. My mother was surprisingly strong, having survived not only these health problems but also the shelling of Athens during World War II, yet somehow, she liked to convince everyone that she was weak, a victim who needed constant care. 

My father had been that primary caregiver, her rock—her lifeline to the world. When he died, my mother was understandably adrift. In order to protect her, my father had declined to tell my mother exactly how sick he was, perhaps believing he had more time to live than he did. But her lack of emotional preparedness and the relative speed of my father’s passing sent my mother into a tailspin. There were days when she stubbornly refused to take her medication and her memory loss worsened. There were times when she became short-tempered with Eleni and with me. 

As the weeks passed, I tried to keep our lives in Brooklyn in balance. My daughter was in first grade now, learning to read, write, and socialize. I was working from home as a freelance writer and editor, which gave me flexibility in terms of time and workflow. But every weekend, Eleni and I would run out to my mother’s house some fifty miles away to check up on her and a family friend who’d agreed to stay temporarily. My mother was sad, lonely, and increasingly confused, and it became clear she would soon need a higher level of care. The turning point came a short while later, when my mother arrived at my apartment for an extended visit. As she bent to tie her shoelaces one day, she slipped and fell, fracturing a vertebra in her back. It was the last day my mother would walk independently. She would soon need a wheelchair. 

Faced with this new set of circumstances and knowing my mother could no longer live independently, I decided to move her to Brooklyn, into a sunny assisted-care facility near my home. I hired loving professional aides to care for my mother and I visited almost daily. But although the logistics of having my mother close by made life easier, I was still wracked with guilt. I knew my mom was suffering. 

For one thing, my mother wanted to go home, and home meant her house on Long Island. Because of her deepening dementia and overwhelming grief, my mother couldn’t understand why she couldn’t live alone and why my father had left her. In an effort to comfort her and settle her nerves, I brought my mother some personal belongings, including a painting she loved of me and Eleni. I also brought my six-year-old daughter to visit her whenever possible. Sometimes Eleni would draw or play contentedly, and sometimes we would all sit together on the couch, watching TV. But on other days, both my mother and Eleni would vie for my attention while an aide was trying to talk to me. At still other times, Eleni found it too hard to visit. It was tough for her to reconcile the grandma she’d once known with the one now lying in a hospital bed. How could this be possible? 

For more than eight years, I was tasked with balancing the needs of both my mother and daughter. Early on, I decided it would be easier for me to see my mother on my own, preferably when Eleni was at school or at a friend’s house. I could sit and hold my mother’s hand or help feed her. I could take her to doctor visits, check on her medication, and talk to her aides without interruption. Eleni would come for shorter visits, after school or on the weekends. 

My days with Eleni at home and in the world were cherished times and often proved to be the antidote, the needed balance, to caring for an aging parent. As a first-time mother—and an older one, at that—I loved every stage of Eleni’s development. As she grew, my daughter played sports. She read and watched movies. She danced. She had friends. She grew taller than me and at times her grandmother barely recognized her, instead remembering her as a smaller child. While my mother drifted in and out of reality and often in and out of hospitals and hospice care, my daughter found joy in real-life activities. She was thriving, and her curiosity about the world buoyed me. 

Eleni also knew intuitively that I was doing my best in a difficult situation. From the time she was six until she was fourteen, Eleni watched as I cared for my mother as she edged closer to dying and bounced back again. She, along with family friends, helped me clear out our Long Island home with its more-than-fifty-years’ worth of possessions, and she was there on the tearful day we sold it to help pay for my mother’s care. Five years after my father’s mesothelioma diagnosis, I was diagnosed with early-stage endometrial cancer and required surgery. Eleni was there to greet me at home with her godparents on the day I returned from the hospital. I was fortunate in that Eleni had always been a considerate child and a fairly easy one to raise. And as she grew older and into her teen years, she empathetically cut me slack when my conflicting duties got the best of me. 

In hindsight, it’s hard to say how I—we, all three of us— got through those challenging years. Sometimes things fell apart, such as when an aide, Eleni, and I took my mother to a doctor’s appointment and got stranded when our wheelchair-accessible transport failed to arrive. Other times, I lost my patience; occasionally, I completely lost my temper with everyone. Eleni had hard days of her own and sometimes seemed inconsolable despite my best efforts to support her. But even in my worst moments, I was lucky enough to have a village to help raise my child and care for my aging mother. 

During those years, I thought often of my father and how he had run marathons later into life, driven by a will of steel. When he died, it felt as if I’d followed in his footsteps. My marathon, however, was of an emotional nature, a very long race that would call for a great deal of energy, determination, and grit in order to reach the finish line. But because I was an older parent in my late forties and fifties during those “sandwich” years, I was able to draw on decades of my own life experience and find wells of strength I never believed I had. 

I was also willing to refocus my priorities on both my mother and daughter, knowing I had one shot to get this right. (As a result, my career and personal life were indefinitely put on hold.) It soon became clear that I couldn’t help my mother get “better,” but I was dedicated to helping her find some measure of comfort and peace. Over time she became less verbal, making it hard to know exactly what she needed and why she held on for so long. But as one of her nurses once told me, “She has too much love. She’s not going anywhere.” As for Eleni, I had waited so long to become a mother that I wanted our experience together to be memorable. I wanted to soak up all the time we had at each stage of her journey, whether it was the big things, like going to Disney World when she was nine, or the small things, like watching Harry Potter movies on repeat. Her joy, happiness, and sound emotional development were at the top of my to-do list each and every day.

In the end, my mother chose the time and place of her passing. On February 15, 2013, on what would have been my father’s eighty-eighth birthday and one week short of her own, my mother died in the Brooklyn hospital where I was born more than fifty years earlier. In another act of perfect symmetry, she was holding the hand of my daughter, a child who was then fourteen and had been named after her, years earlier. 

It was an emotional walk home from the hospital that night. But when we arrived back at our apartment, I pulled out my mother’s wedding ring, a simple, silver band with tiny, twinkling diamonds – a symbol of my parents’ long commitment. I slipped the ring onto my hand thinking I might wear it, but it just didn’t look right on me, so I offered it to Eleni. By some stroke of magic, it fit perfectly on her long, slender ring finger, and I joked that my mother’s ring chose its wearer, just like Harry Potter’s wand chose him. 

Eleni has worn my mother’s ring religiously since that night. It traveled with her and protected her on the subways she took to high school. It swam with her and glistened in the turquoise-dappled waters of the Aegean Sea. It accompanied her to college and to a semester abroad in Italy. It has been given a new life, a new set of adventures in a modern world. My mother’s ring was one that I loved and admired during childhood, and it’s a ring my daughter wears proudly now in memory of her namesake. It’s a symbol of the time that my mother, Eleni, and I all spent together—and a symbol that we all made it through. 


Tick Tock reading at Community Bookstore on Wednesday, 10/6 at 7:30PM EDT featuring Laura Broadwell, Cathy Arnst, Jean Leung, Salma Abdelnour, and editors Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin.

Filed Under: Books, Community, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading, Reader Excerpt Tagged With: books, parenting, Park Slope

STEADFAST: Frances Perkins, Champion of Workers’ Rights

August 3, 2021 By Jennifer J. Merz Filed Under: Books, Local Literature Tagged With: books, jennifer j merz, steadfast

Frances Perkins gasped in disbelief when she visited a factory and saw the horrific conditions that workers endured. Moved by injustice, she felt compelled to help, setting her on a path of social work. 

But, when Frances witnessed New York City’s Triangle Factory fire in 1911, her desire to assist the American worker transformed into a lifelong mission. Determined to fix the problems that led to the tragedy, Frances worked to change a broken system at a time when women were discouraged from speaking up, let alone having careers. She saw the potential for radical workplace reform, if she could persuade her male colleagues to listen to her. Rather than shrink from challenges, she followed her beloved grandmother’s advice to embrace life’s opportunities and walk through open doors. In truth, Frances kicked them open along the way. 

With courage and integrity, she became the first woman to serve in a U.S. Presidential Cabinet, creating an enduring legacy. As Secretary of Labor, she was the force behind the New Deal and Social Security, programs that protect American workers to this day. This is the inspiring story of a heroic trailblazer. She’s the most important woman you likely haven’t heard of – yet.

www.jennifermerz.com

Filed Under: Books, Local Literature Tagged With: books, jennifer j merz, steadfast

Your Winter Reader List: Upcoming Release and Timeless Classics Fit For the Season

February 26, 2019 By Erika Veurink Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: books, Erika veurink, Literature, new books, Park Slope, reader, winter reader

Earlier evenings and lower temperatures combine for optimal reading weather. Tucked inside walk ups and brownstones, lining the snowy streets of Park Slope, are toppling bookshelves. They boast buzzy new novels with stunning covers, forgotten required reading from undergrad, and beloved favorites with turned in pages. Even the most seasoned of readers can feel the all too familiar uncertainty of what to read next. There’s nothing like the perfect recommendation to get you out of the decision slump. That’s where local bookstores come in. Chris Molnar from powerHouse Books (1111 8th Ave Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718-666-3049) or www.powerhouseon8th.com online) was happy to share his thoughts on what’s to come and where to begin your winter reading adventure. 

What new novels are you most excited about carrying this winter? 

I can’t wait for Tessa Hadley’s Late In The Day. In my opinion she’s without peer in the New Yorker-approved mainstream of literary fiction. Her short stories have always been marvels of concision, depth, and atmosphere, but lately has her longer work gotten just as good.  With a book club ready plot (two couples that are old friends; one dies and secrets emerge) and coming off 2015’s career-best The Past, I think this has the potential to be a real breakout for her. 

Darius James’ Negrophobia isn’t technically new, but the upcoming NYRB re-release will be a high profile event, reintroducing a brilliant satire on racism that casts a long shadow over everything from The Sellout to Atlanta to Sorry to Bother You.

Are there new authors you think would have special appeal to the Brooklyn reader?

Like a garage rock revival band, Andrew Martin’s debut novel Early Work is a book out of time, a total throwback despite all the current references to Kanye West or Only Lovers Left Alive.  The obvious heir to Philip Roth or David Gates and their cosmopolitan antiheroes, not to mention dishy literary world rom-coms like The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., it’s the kind of book that used to be omnipresent in Brooklyn, but which now has the field to itself.  It is so blithely against the topical trend that it somehow feels bold despite being a breezy, almost guilty pleasure.  Not to mention that beautiful, Balthus-featuring, Rodrigo Corral-designed cover.

Classically, is there a type of novel you find Park Slope residents are drawn to? An all-time favorite author of the neighborhood?

Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels and Knausgaard’s My Struggle series are both standards, and it makes sense – their mix of epic sweep and quotidian warmth is perfect for such an iconic yet family-oriented neighborhood.  It’s no contest, though; the all-time favorite is Haruki Murakami.  No matter the month, he’s always in the top ten bestselling authors here.  I’m not completely sure why that is, but I can definitely see something about those vanishing cats and women fitting in perfectly with the neighborhood, the mystery you feel looking down a row of beautiful, secretive brownstones at dusk.

 Along with new novels, are there any classics you can recommend readers revisit in the winter months?

You can never go wrong with Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.  It’s so short that you can read it in one sitting, but his mastery of late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century American history is so complete that you feel transported to another time, the action so liquid, so organically strange, so true-to-life in a way that historical fiction rarely is.

Between that and Robert Caro’s riveting (and much, much longer) biography of master builder Robert Moses, The Power Broker, you can pretty much get a full curriculum in the development of America’s wilds, even if it’s just through the eyes of a fictional character and an unelected parks official.

For more recommendations, stop in the store and say hello, tell them the Reader sent you. Also, don’t be afraid to ask your  literary inclined friends. I’m excited for The Au Pair, a debut by Emma Rous and The Care and Feeding of of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray. Perennial winter favorites I find myself returning to include Fates and Furies by Lauren Gross and Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard.

Lastly, don’t forget to check Instagram or as the book inclined community using the app refers to it as, #bookstagram. Follow @powerhouseon8th for booksellers’ most recent loves.

Art by Heather Heckel

 

Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: books, Erika veurink, Literature, new books, Park Slope, reader, winter reader

Spring Reading

April 19, 2018 By Anna Storm Filed Under: Books Tagged With: books, fresh, list, new, reading, recommendation, season, spring

Spring has sprung, which means it’s time to head to the park for an afternoon—or several of them—of outdoor reading. Below, our recommendations for the best new books to read under a Prospect Park tree:

 

1. The House of Broken Angels

by Luis Alberto Urrea

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Urrea (The Devil’s Highway) comes a multigenerational saga of loss, love and the borderlands between cultures. The family of Miguel de La Cruz, or “Big Angel,” has gathered to celebrate the dying patriarch’s final birthday, when, unexpectedly, Big Angel’s elderly mother passes away. As the weekend unfolds and the Mexican-American clan recounts its family legends, Big Angel’s half-brother, “Little Angel,” wrestles with his half-Mexican, half-gringo identity. Urrea, whose brother was dying of cancer when his own mother passed, has said the sprawling narrative is based on true experiences.

 

2. The Chandelier

by Clarice Lispector

This sophomore novel of literary giantess Lispector is available in English now for the first time. Initially published in Portuguese in 1946, The Chandelier is a stream-of-consciousness account of the life, loves and densely worded thoughts of our protagonist, Virginia. We follow Virginia through her childhood with her brother and best friend, Daniel; across the years with a group of aesthetes; and as her heart breaks when Daniel becomes engaged. Lispector would go on to write such classics as The Passion According to G.H., and to be remembered by American author Benjamin Moser as the most important Jewish writer in the world since Kafka.

 

3. The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

When ambitious Greer Kadetsky lands her dream job at the foundation of her feminist icon, Faith Frank, her future could not seem brighter. But as time passes and Kadetsky is forced to contend with twists and tragedies, her understanding of Frank the woman, as well as what it means to be a woman at all, changes. Wolitzer’s first book for adults since her 2013 hit The Interestings tackles the female zeitgeist with, according to TIME, “a gimlet eye.” 

 

4. Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

A coming-of-age novel set in Britain just after WWII, Warlight tells the story of Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, who, as children, were left by their mother to the care of a mysterious man named “the Moth.” They soon learn their mother lied to them when she gave her reason for leaving. Years later, Nathaniel pieces together all that he failed to understand as a child, taking us along for the unconventionally written ride through recollections, facts and speculation. Ondaatgje previously won the Booker Prize for the romance, The English Patient. 

 

5. Islandborn

by Junot Diaz

The acclaimed author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao makes his first foray into children’s literature with the picture book, Islandborn. Everyone in Lola’s class is from somewhere else. When their teacher asks that they draw “the country you were originally from,” Lola becomes anxious. She knows she’s from “The Island,” but she doesn’t remember the place. Soon she’s embarking on a quest to understand her heritage, interviewing family, friends and neighbors, who describe a beautiful, vibrant land, which was yet rife with fear and turmoil. Questions of belonging and collective memory give this slim book, illustrated by Leo Espinosa, novelistic heft.

 

6. Tomorrow Will Be Different

by Sarah McBride

McBride may be only 27, but the eventful life she has led to date more than justifies this publication of her memoirs. For those who can’t place the name, McBride is the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign as well as the first transgender person to speak at a national convention. Tomorrow Will Be Different chronicles her struggle to come out while acting as American University student-body president, her political fights for equal rights, and her relationship with the transgender man who would become her husband before tragically dying of cancer. Alternately political and personal, Tomorrow Will Be Different is a stirring account of one remarkable woman’s life and loves.

 

7. The Recovering

by Leslie Jamison

The author of The Empathy Exams returns with this nonfiction examination of her journey toward sobriety. Interwoven among autobiographical accounts are reflections on famous alcoholic writers, including John Berryman and Raymond Carver, as well as works of reportage and literary criticism. The book’s erudition and, yes, empathy, have earned the writer, who has been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, high praise.

 

8. Not That Bad

Edited by Roxane Gay

Bad Feminist’s Roxane Gay edits this anthology of essays—some previously published, others issued here for the first time—on rape and sexual assault. Writer-contributors include actors Gabrielle Union and Ally Sheedy and authors like Amy Jo Burns and Bob Shacochis. Not That Bad is an unflinching examination of a world in which women who speak out are, in the words of Gay, “routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied.”

 

9. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”

by Zora Neale Hurston

A remarkable literary achievement, Barracoon is Zora Neale Hurston’s nonfiction account of American slavery, based on her interviews with one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade. The author of Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of elderly Cudjo Lewis, whom she met in 1927, and who was abducted from Africa before being taken to the United States 50 years after the U.S. officially abolished the slave trade. From his childhood in Africa, to the horrors of abduction and The Middle Passage, to life in America and the founding of an African-centric community in Alabama, Cudjo’s story is told in Hurston’s inimitably compassionate style.

 

10.  The Opposite of Hate

by Sally Kohn

With this book, CNN commentator—and Park Slope resident!—Sally Kohn has set herself a difficult task: “to discover why we hate and how [we] can stop it.” She speaks with researchers and scientists in an effort to learn about the cultural and evolutionary roots of hate, travels around the world, from Rwanda to the Middle East and around the United States, profiling people commonly associated with notions of hatred: white supremacists, terrorists and Twitter trolls, to name a few. And she probes several shameful moments from her own past, when she failed to do what, with this book, she hopes to help others do: wander out from “this wilderness of hate.”

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: books, fresh, list, new, reading, recommendation, season, spring

The Art of Bookselling • The Reader Interview

January 31, 2018 By Anna Storm Filed Under: Books, The Reader Interview Tagged With: bestseller, books, bookstore, community, local, selling

Stephanie Valdez and Ezra Goldstein of Community Bookstore

 

“You’re really catching us on quite a day,” said Stephanie Valdez when I met up with her and Community Bookstore co-owner Ezra Goldstein one afternoon early in December. Not only was the usual holiday rush upon them, there were last-minute children’s book fairs to coordinate (“it’s almost like setting up two more stores”), book orders to be completed without delay, and sniffles to be suppressed as best one could. (All sneezes have been omitted from the following conversation.) Yet the staff was in good cheer. When I arrived, Ezra was standing by the front register regaling several employees and a customer with a story. Stephanie laughed as she typed busily at the computer, while store mascot Tiny the Cat lounged with characteristic disinterest inside his basket in a corner of the window.

At the back of the store by several bowls of cat food Stephanie and I chatted before Ezra, busy with orders, joined us partway through the conversation. They spoke of current bestsellers, the books that should be selling better, that episode of “Louie,” the charm of Karl Ove Knausgaard, and a man, his chicken and Tiny the Cat.


To begin, it would be great if you could describe how you found the store when you first took over in 2011.

Stephanie Valdez: How we found it? In what condition?

Exactly, how you would describe the space.

SV: The store was much different then than it is today. Ok, how would I describe it. The owner, who’s a friend of ours, her name is Catherine, she’d moved to Albania, and she was going back and forth between here and Albania on a regular basis, and the store was being run by a couple of college students who were here trying to do their best under the very difficult circumstances. The store was in debt; it was filled with animals. We had two dogs, two cats, a bearded dragon, a bunny, and two turtles. Which made it chaotic. And physically, the store was sort of a labyrinth of shelves and nooks and crannies, and it was in need of some work. We actually bought it in 2011, but we took over in 2010, so we spent some time just fixing it up. And it was really wonderful, in a way, because the work that needed to be done was so clear. Every day you’d come in and you’d just tackle a corner. It was sort of like a fixer-upper project where you’re renovating a house, where every day you can tackle a project and turn it around and make it better. And that process was sort of a gift to us and part of why we decided to buy the store.

What would you say is the most interesting event that you have hosted?

[pullquote]We are very lucky because we are one of the few independents that we almost only sell books, we don’t have to entice people in with toys to get them to buy books. We just focus on books. We’re very lucky our audience is made up of very avid readers. We don’t have to convince them that books are a necessity[/pullquote]SV: That’s a really tough question. I’d have to think about that a little bit. Certainly our most packed ever was when we had Karl Ove Knausgaard. It’s when he suddenly got very famous, and we knew it would be packed, but it ended up being like, wall-to-wall standing-room-only for 200ish people. We’ve never hosted anything like that, before or since.

Was it in this space, in the bookstore?

SV: [Nods affirmatively] There was a line outside the door. To get him into the space we had to move people aside in order to go through. There’s actually a picture on The New York Times site of him parting the crowds to walk through this completely packed space. That was also very charming, because he ended up staying and hanging out with us for the whole evening in the garden, drinking cheap beer, which is unlike what most authors do.

What do most authors do?

SV: Especially touring authors, when they come to New York they have dinner with their agent or they go out with their friends that are local. It’s rare that they sit in the Community Bookstore garden and drink cheap beer.

Is there a writer whom you have never hosted that you would love to?

SV: I always wanted to host Marilynne Robinson. And then we actually did host Marilynne Robinson and I was judging a literary prize. And of all days, it’s the day we were hosting Marilynne Robinson that I had to be in another city, judging a prize. And I tried to make it work and there was just no way to be in two places at once, and so, I missed hosting Marilynne Robinson. Which was unfortunate. But I have hope that we will host her again.

 

 

Do you have a favorite Park Slope author?

That seems fraught.

It does!

SV: It seems like if I do, I shouldn’t say. [Pause] Probably Siri Hustvedt.

And why is that?

SV: I just love her books. They’re brainy and complex and feminist and brilliant.

Are you yourself a writer?

SV: I dabble a little bit, but I’ll say no, not currently.

I know you also manage Terrace Books. What are some of the challenges you face as you try to manage these two spaces at once?

SV: Time. Time is the biggest. Terrace Books is sort of my side-hustle. My husband runs that shop. But I do most of the book-buying. And I also do a bit of rare books out of that space, and so, that’s my side project. Bookstores require a lot of time. I mean, it’s a small space, you think, how complicated is it to run a bookstore? Somehow there are always new books and there are always new events. So, however much time we have, it doesn’t ever seem to be quite enough.

How would you describe a typical day at Community Bookstore?

SV: A typical day involves coming in, feeding the cat, turning on all the lights and the computers, and then, Ezra orders books every day, every weekday, so he works on book orders. And then the thing about working in a bookstore is that you never know what the day will bring. You never know who will show up and what questions they’ll ask and what conversations will ensue. There’s a lot of email in my job, between events and ordering books and all sorts of things. And tending the shelves, shelving books. I do less unpacking than I used to, but we get boxes and boxes of books, five days a week. So, this time of year, it can be 40 boxes of books.

Do you read all the new books that come in?

SV: Oh, I wish. We try to read as much as we can, but that just depends.

Do you try to set aside time to do so?

SV: Reading is not part of our day-job. It’s all extra-curricular. So, just like anywhere else, we have to fit it into our after hours’ time. I have a one-year-old, so, currently my after hours’ time is a little more limited than usual.

Are you reading any books to your one-year-old?

SV: Oh, yes. He’s a very avid reader so far. He’s now at the phase where he tends to want to repeat the same books.

Which can be both fun and a little maddening, I would imagine.

SV: Yeah, I’ve already memorized a shocking number of children’s’ books, which makes me realize I could have been memorizing all kinds of things all along.

Does he have a favorite?

SV: What’s his absolute favorite right now? He really likes The Quiet Noisy Book, by Margaret Wise Brown. She’s famous for Goodnight Moon. This is sort of a lost book of hers that’s been republished. And a book called Hooray for Birds [by Lucy Cousins]. Which is just about birds.

I know you mentioned [Tiny] the cat earlier as well. I’ve read a few different stories about him. Do you have a favorite?

SV: Well, my favorite was when I was hosting a story-time for an author and there was a group of toddlers sitting here on the floor and a man walked into the middle of the event and pulled out a chicken from under his coat, and put the chicken down on the ground. And within an instant, Tiny was chasing the chicken and we were chasing the chicken and Tiny to try and prevent disaster in front of this group of toddlers.

Why did this man bring a chicken to the store?

SV: I guess there was a chicken in the book and they thought it might be fun if he just showed up and brought a chicken. It was a show-and-tell type thing. But we weren’t warned about the chicken, and cats and chickens don’t really mix. And I guess he had a cat at home as well as a chicken, so, as far as he knew, cats and chickens cohabitated just fine. But our cat, Tiny, does kill birds with some regularity, so, this was not your average cat.

These were not characters from a children’s story.

SV: Exactly.

[Ezra joins]

What is your current bestseller here in the store?

SV: Is it Jennifer Egan?

Ezra Goldstein: It would be close between Manhattan Beach [by Jennifer Egan] and Sing, Unburied, Sing [by Jesmyn Ward], I think.

Are there books that you believe ought to be selling better than they are? 

EG: Well, there are a lot of books like that. But there are a couple of books that I’ve read recently that are really outstanding that didn’t make any of the best lists that should have been on the lists. One of which I’m reading now called Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor, terrific book. Another is Solar Bones [by Mike McCormack], really good book. But that’s up to us, because a lot of books that we think are really good don’t get the publicity that they deserve, because they come from small presses or they go under the radar. In general, small presses don’t get the publicity they deserve, so that’s why we exist, to put those books in people’s hands.

How do you try to find the smaller under-the-radar books?

SV: We talk a lot to those small publishers as well as talk to other readers, whether it’s other booksellers, customers who come in. We read reviews. You try to keep your ear to the ground for good things coming out.

EG: The book Reservoir 13, one of our customers told me I had to read it. And she was right.

Do you have customers coming in and asking you for books that are not currently stocked?

SV: Every day. We do a lot of books by special order, because we’re such a small store, and we can often get books within a day or two. So, yes. We often have people special-order books. And then we often take a look at them to see if that’s something we should carry.

EG: I think it’s also that it’s connected to our reputation, that we can get books and we’re really good at getting books. And also our clientele tend to be people who go very deep into backlist books, you know, books that came out 20 years ago or 30 years ago. Those are the kinds of readers that we have.

SV: Our customer base is filled with just great readers and they often recommend us books, so it is a two-way conversation.

Have you ever had a particularly unusual request?

SV: For a book?

Yes, for a book, something that was very difficult to find, that was very old, or very rare. Speaking of Terrace Books as well.

SV: Well, we don’t do rare or used special orders. So mostly, it’s just things that are out of print. I think the most frustrating thing is when there’s something that’s out of print that shouldn’t be. There have been various points in time when certain books are just out of print, and it seems like it shouldn’t be out of print.

EG: With some regularity we’ll track down a book in England that we order for people. It’ll take a month to get, but, you know, we’ll get it.

SV: We don’t really have a zany story. It’s mostly pretty prosaic.

EG: One of the great stories was that Laura Ingalls Wilder book, the original one that came from the South Dakota historical society. It got written up somewhere and became this surprise bestseller.

SV: In The Times, yeah.

EG: This poor tiny historical society in South Dakota was cranking out books. So I was calling South Dakota and we actually got—I think we got just about every copy they had. [Laughs]

What is the book that you’ve been recommending the most recently?

EG: Well, you know, it depends on who the person is. But, the Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won all the prizes, deserved them. It’s a very fine book. But it’s not for everybody because it’s a very grim and hard book. That’s the art of bookselling, is trying to match the recommendation with what people want.

I also saw that Community Bookstore was featured in an episode of “Louie” a few years ago. Have you had customers coming in and asking you about that?

SV: I actually haven’t had any inquiries lately.

EG: Not lately.

SV: Since the scandal.

EG: But a lot right after the show came out. A lot. People would come in and wander around and say, ‘Nah, this isn’t the store. It’s not big enough.’ [Laughs]

SV: It’s unfortunate. We weren’t necessarily fans of his, and a couple of years ago quite a few rumors were flying around about these allegations. So we haven’t really used that footage as publicity or anything and we met him in passing once. I don’t think we have anything especially interesting to say about him or the scandal.

EG: Although I did get to hang out with Parker Posey, so.

Is she cool in real life?

EG: Oh, yeah. She’s really neat. Yeah. She’s really nice. She was in the episode.

SV: And Chloe Sevigny as well.

EG: Yeah, Chloe Sevigny, that’s right. Both very nice.

SV: Both readers.

Did they buy anything?

EG: Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah. And the producer, who’s a wonderful woman, bought a whole big stack of books.

SV: We’ll probably continue to just keep our distance and move on.

You read a lot about the resurgence of independent bookstores nowadays, in spite of Amazon. To what would you attribute your continuing success here?

EG: A very loyal customer-base. And just being fortunate to live in a neighborhood where people like to shop small and like to see what they’re buying and like books, love books.

SV: Dedicated readers. We are very lucky because we are one of the few independents that we almost only sell books, we don’t have to entice people in with toys to get them to buy books. We just focus on books. We’re very lucky our audience is made up of very avid readers. We don’t have to convince them that books are a necessity.

 

 

Filed Under: Books, The Reader Interview Tagged With: bestseller, books, bookstore, community, local, selling

Park Slope Reader Fall Reading Recommendations

October 26, 2017 By Anna Storm Filed Under: Books Tagged With: authors, books, reading

“With the arrival of chillier weather comes a new batch of books with which to curl up. Here, a list of 11  titles to enjoy this fall.”

 

Sing, Unburied, Sing

— by Jesmyn Ward —

In her first novel since 2011’s National Book Award-winning Salvage The Bones, Ward tracks a mixed-race family through rural Mississippi. Jojo is a lonely 13-year-old who helps his grandparents raise his baby sister, while his mother, Leonie, struggles with drug addiction, visions of her dead brother and an obsessive love for Jojo’s white father, recently released from prison. Combining allusions to The Odyssey and The Old Testament with elements of magical realism, Ward has written a book, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, whose “Southern gothic aura recalls the dense, head-spinning prose of William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor.”

 

The Origin of Others

— by Toni Morrison —

Nobel and Pulitzer-winning Morrison draws on her 2016 Charles Norton Lecture series at Harvard for six essays that try to answer the question, “What is race (other than genetic imagination), and why does it matter?” As she engages with historical events and literary texts, from those of Hemingway to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Faulkner to Flannery O’Connor (and several of her own novels), the author examines the process of “othering” and racial dehumanization. Foreword by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

 

A Legacy of Spies

— by John Le Carré —

Fans of the indubitable master of the spy thriller, David Cornwell, aka, John Le Carré, rejoice: the author has returned with his first George Smiley novel in over 25 years. The focus here is on Smiley’s aged colleague and disciple, Peter Guillam, who has been living on a remote farm in Brittany when a letter from the British Secret Service arrives to summon him to London. It seems his Cold War past has returned to haunt him…The novel deftly weaves past with present, so one may want to revisit its predecessors, including The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, first.

 

Tales of Two Americas

— edited by John Freeman —

If the bombast and vitriol of today’s news cycle has gotten you down, or if you’re someone who understands large questions best when they’re distilled to human scale, you may enjoy this collection of essays, longform journalism, short stories, and poetry that addresses contemporary American inequality. Heavy-hitters including Roxane Gay, Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Patchett, and Karen Russell, among others, contribute their insights as they “look beyond numbers and wages to convey what it feels like to live in this divided nation.”

 

Manhattan Beach

— by Jennifer Egan —

This novel recently longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, from the author whose A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and

National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, is a noir-like tale set during WWII. Our heroine is Anna Kerrigan, a young woman who has taken advantage of the employment opportunities that a country at war has newly afforded women, and become the first female diver. One night she runs into an old friend of her father’s, a man who may help her understand the reasons for her father’s disappearance. Publisher’s Weekly raves, “the novel is tremendously assured and rich, moving from depictions of violence to deep tenderness.”

 

The World Goes On

— by Lázló Krasznahorkai —

The Hungarian Krasznahorkai is a favorite of none other than Krauss herself, who calls him “one of the finest writers at work today.” In this collection of what could best be described as short stories, although their form, like many Krasznahorkai tales, defies categorization, a narrator addresses the audience directly before telling 11 stories. Krasznahorkai explains, “Each text is about drawing our attention away from this world, speeding our body toward annihilation, and immersing ourselves in a current of thought or narrative.” A must for those who like their fiction with an overtly philosophical bent.

 

The River of Consciousness

— by Oliver Sacks —

This posthumous collection of essays from the late scientist, bestselling author and polymath explores several of the grand themes with which Sacks engaged throughout his life’s works: memory, time, consciousness, and creativity among them. It is one of two books on which he was working at the time of his death, and includes reflections on misheard words and the importance of Darwin’s botany.

 

Mrs. Caliban

— by Rachel Ingalls —

This reissue of the 1982 novel centers on suburban housewife Dorothy, who, while doing chores and waiting for her husband to return from work, hears a radio announcement warning of a monster that has escaped from the Institute of Oceanographic Research. Naturally, a romance between the lonely woman and the lizard-like creature ensues. Reviewers have compared the book to “King Kong, Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’ domestic realism, B-horror movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter.” How could you resist?

 

Five-Carat Soul

— by James McBride —

From the author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird comes a collection of short stories that treats our “struggle to understand who we are in a world we don’t fully comprehend” with humor and inventiveness. The stories themselves follow, among others, an antiques dealer tracking a toy once commissioned by the Civil War commander, Robert E. Lee; Abraham Lincoln himself; and the members of the titular Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band, each of whom recounts a tale from his entertainingly messy life.

 

 Keeping On Keeping On

— by Alan Bennett —

The man who wrote The History Boys, The Madness of King George and The Lady in the Van returns with his third collection of prose. Included are expanded versions of the diaries he publishes annually in the London Review of Books, and which address fame, public libraries and “tweeness.” He takes witty aim at his public persona: “I am in the pigeonhole marked ‘no threat’ and did I stab Judi Dench with a pitchfork I should still be a Teddy Bear.”

 

Forest Dark 

— by Nicole Krauss —

Krauss’ fourth novel follows two Americans – the wealthy retiree, Jules Epstein, and the Brooklyn novelist, Nicole – as they travel to Israel in search of new meaning. What the LA Review of Books calls Krauss’ “most inward-looking novel” and The Guardian “a brilliant achievement” is a meditation on self-transformation and that which lies beyond the visible world.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: authors, books, reading

Summer Reading

August 9, 2016 By Darley Stewart Filed Under: Books Tagged With: author, books, de Silva, de Witt, family, indie press, Larsen, Leibowitz, novel review, reading, Solomon, summer

Summer reading is better than ever. 

It’s true that most of us would rather spend our time during the summer eating BBQ, visiting Aruba, or finding any excuse to avoid our professional obligations. But summer reading at its finest isn’t work. It’s a clear, pure moment we find for ourselves as the weather gets hotter, muggier, messier. Some of us can’t afford anything other than a staycation, anyway!  

Without a good summer book to fall into, we are minimizing introspective pleasures that are as good as an intoxicating (or intoxicated) night by the blissful waterfront. A subway ride is almost intolerable without a good book, no matter the season, but especially summer as the tourists flood the city and every good urban citizen needs to bury their eyes in an alternate reality. Even more convenient when the alternate realities are as seductive as the ones I have listed below. The list doesn’t end — it merely begins here. Think of a good summer read as a new pair of shades, a really good pair, blocking out the sun in style. Substitute sun with urban idiocy and style with … style.


Leaving LucyLeaving Lucy Pear by Anna Solomon 

Fiction

Sink into Park Slope author Anna Solomon’s novel, about the entangled lives of two women in 1920s New England, who share their status as mothers of Lucy Pear, the beating heart of a novel that may be set in a historical framework but feels satisfying outside of the solidity of this composition, as the narrative moves with the force from its subtle substructures. You aren’t going to run into any comparisons to Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work or Pamela Erens’ Eleven Hours here. You aren’t going to find any comparisons from me, at least, as I think this is a rare novel, not for subject matter or technique (an omniscient narrator tells the story in order to bring clarity to how all the lives in the novel are changed by Lucy Pear), but for a fullness and hyper-dimensionality that heats up the page.

Though there are always twenty other writers a stone’s throw away, Anna Solomon is proud to call herself a local author. She has worked at the Brooklyn Writers Space for a number of years, where writers forge a community of genuine literary support. Perhaps some of the intense energy of returning to Park Slope after a few brief years in Providence, constantly surrounded here by other writers, has filtered into this gorgeous novel. Pack this novel with you on your next vacation, and don’t miss Anna’s summer readings at BookCourt on Wednesday, July 27 and at Community Bookstore on Thursday, July 28. There will be perry available, an alcoholic pear cider that is featured in Anna’s Prohibition era-based novel.


Stranger FatherStranger, Father, Beloved by Taylor Larsen

Fiction

Who says summer reading has to be light? In this novel about the American family and its deepest, most sordid secrets, nothing is as it appears. Michael wants to have himself replaced. He sees no redemption for his family as long as he is the head of it. Pure language you can sink into, knowing that while all that perfect summer scenery rolls in your view of emotion, memory and family will never be quite the same. This is more than a marriage falling apart, an ode to a fancy house with unhappy people in it, or a man fighting with the fragilities of his own mind. Taylor Larsen, based in Brooklyn, has written a searing first novel that takes us on a journey into the most fearful chambers of our own hearts.


Square Wave by Mark de Silva  

Fiction

Mark de Silva’s debut novel on indie press Two Dollar Radio is a literary gem you won’t want to miss this summer. de Silva, who writes both from and beyond an academic background in philosophy, is not necessarily taking an obvious “cerebral” approach to his narrative structures, though the novel has been noted for its difficult prose. Dystopian fiction is a term that you can leave behind at the beach. If you want rewarding, brain-battering prose with flashes of heart, Square Wave has at its center a crumbling America in which Carl Stagg investigates an assault and prepares a series of lectures about his ancestors’ exploits in 17th-century Sri Lanka.


White Nights In Split Town City Finale cover trimmedWhite Nights in Split Town City by Annie de Witt

Fiction

Tyrant Books is run by Giancarlo Trapano, who has published father and son Lish (Gordon and Atticus) and here we have Annie de Witt’s first novel, White Nights in Split Town City, a slender elegant beast set to cure your summer wanderlust. Not all of us have the luxury of leaving town this summer, but the pages of this novel will penetrate your notion of what it means to belong to a place. Praised by Ben Marcus as a “word-drunk novel,” you will read Jean’s thirteen-year-old “coming-of-age” story that fully possesses the lyricism you would expect from a tale set on the last unpaved road in a rural American town in the summer of 1990. What you may not be prepared for is how strangely and (at first glance) simply the prose disintegrates any ideas you might have about fixed identities and escapist fantasies — in less than two-hundred pages, you will be coldly pressed into dialogue and lifted up into shards of light. Take a risk.


Fran Hi-ResThe Fran Lebowitz Reader

Vintage, Non-Fiction

Laugh a little. Fran Lebowitz will take you there. You can’t always read new books. In Fran’s own words, “Summer has an unfortunate effect upon hostesses who have been unduly influenced by the photography of Irving Penn and take the season as a cue to serve dinners of astonishingly meager proportions.” Revise your summer literary menu with these short, crisp essays on everything from water chestnuts to conceptual art.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: author, books, de Silva, de Witt, family, indie press, Larsen, Leibowitz, novel review, reading, Solomon, summer

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