A Few Thousand Words About Love

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. First St. Martin's Edition [stated]. First Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Format is approximately 5.75 inches by 8.5 inches. [14], 240, [2] pages. Inscribed by the Editor on the half-title page. Inscription reads For Suzy--The good daughter! Wish you many more than [arrow points to title]! Yours Mickey Pearlman. Also signed Mickey with a figure on the title page. Mickey Pearlman is the editor of A Few Thousand Words About Love, American Women Writing Fiction: Memory, Identity, Family, Space, of Mother Puzzles: Daughters and Mothers in Contemporary American Literature, and Canadian Women Writing Fiction. In this work, a talented group of writers--including Peter Cameron, Joyce Carol Oates, Myra Goldberg, Brian Hall, Elizabeth McCrracken, Larry O'Connor, Shawn Wong, Katharine Weber, Ron Carlson, Margot Livesey, Alex Pate, Carolyn See, Dennis McFarland and Tim Gautreax--shares some original memoirs and essays on love. The Editor invited established writes and rising starts to think about that eternally evocative subject. The answer that emerged from these gifted writers is a collection of original memoirs about: a Broadway songwriting grandmother, the adoption of a biracial daughter, a Chinese father's love letter to the writer's mother, a childbirth experience, a love affair, and sibling rivalry. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: This excellent anthology compiled by Pearlman offers 17 short memoirs by established and emerging writers, including a piece by the editor, that deal with love in all it's complexities. The selections are a pleasure to read, both for the outstanding quality of the writing as well as for the uniqueness of each experience. Several authors reminisce about loving their partners. Ron Carlson's "Longevity" addresses his 28-year marriage; Larry O'Connor's "My Belt" is a story of a romantic fling with his wife in Paris. In "First Love," what she calls a work of "fiction-memoir," Joyce Carol Oates remembers the emotional chaos she went through when, as a college student, she fell in love with an African American male classmate. Peter Cameron's "Excerpts From Swan Lake" describes the time he and his lover, Neal, stayed at his grandmother's home, although he was never able to bring himself to tell her that he is gay. Carolyn See's "Beulah Land," a poignant tale of her childhood anguish when her father moved away, and Katherine Weber's arresting memoir of her grandmother's decade-long affair with George Gershwin, are both memorable.