by Amy Silverstein |
REVIEWED BY KIM HUBBARD
MEMOIR
An interesting fact about having someone else's heart in your chest: Even after 19 years, the span author Silverstein, 44, has survived post-transplant (she was given 10 years max), it doesn't feel like yours. "My nerve-deprived heart gives me the terrifying sense of impending ventricular fibrillation," she writes. "I feel it all the time." As this compelling memoir makes clear, that's the least of her medical miracle's downsides. Silverstein's fainting spells began in law school. Diagnosed with severe cardiomyopathy, she had a transplant at 25 followed by a new normal: infections, nausea-inducing immunosuppressants and fear of the artery disease that ultimately strikes most transplant patients. And then there was the strain of staying plucky for friends. "My popularity was assured," Silverstein writes, "only so long as I played the ever-resilient patient." Though you can't begrudge her the self-pity, it sometimes grates. Still, her humor and devotion to her husband and son see her (and us) through, and by the end you'll be rooting for her next 20 years.
by Philip Roth |
REVIEWED BY FRANCINE PROSE
NOVEL
Roth's 22nd novel brings his hero Nathan Zuckerman back to New York. For the reader, it's reason to celebrate, but Nathan is hardly in a party mood. Tired of his rural life and in frail health, Zuckerman wanders the city and meets three people who will change his life. As always, Roth writes like an angel, and as Zuckerman clings to the world, Roth reminds us that the closest any of us may get to immortality is the perfectly crafted sentence.
by Shalom Auslander |
REVIEWED BY ANDREW ABRAHAMS
MEMOIR
Auslander grew up in the Orthodox Jewish enclave of Monsey, N.Y., attending yeshiva schools and fighting with a vengeful God. He violated one tenet after another: Eating a Slim Jim, he rationalized that "hot dogs were the deep end of the nonkosher pool, and if I started in the shallow end ... He might just vaguely dislike me." Deeply conflicted, he still marries a nice Jewish girl and has a son, Paix, meaning peace—something that, after reading this hilarious memoir, you'll hope Auslander has finally found.
'With the squeaking by of each unlikely year,' Silverstein writes, 'I felt more and more vulnerable'
WHAT WE'RE LISTENING TO
BONES' EMILY DESCHANEL What I love is David Sedaris. Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim—Hearing him read his books is the best.
CEDRIC THE ENTERTAINER My wife picked The Devil Wears Prada. As a guy you go, "Not that." But you get hooked. I'm like, "Let's stay in the car two more blocks!"
EMMA ROBERTS My aunt [Julia] reads The Nanny Diaries, and I had no idea. I was thinking, "Who is this? She sounds so familiar!" I told all my friends. It was embarrassing.
This year's Nobel Prize winner in literature has written more than 40 books. Our picks: • THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK Her best-known novel, it's beloved by feminists for its forthright descriptions of female psychology and sexuality. • UNDER MY SKIN Her autobiography up to age 30, into which she packed two husbands, three children, jobs, parties and plenty of reading. • MARTHA QUEST Rooted in her own story of trying, and failing, to be a "good" (read: conventional) girl.
One of photographer Lynn Goldsmith's first shots was of the Beatles' shoes—she felt shooting their faces would be "a betrayal" of her real love, the Stones. That kind of passionate fandom shines through in her new book.
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