Here are two acclaimed memoirs in one remarkable volume. In an extraordinarily compelling voice, Dorothy Gallagher tells stories taking us from her parents’ beginnings in the Ukraine to her own childhood in 1940s New York, through the many adventures of her extended family and into her own adult life. Her themes are universal: the fragility of friendship, the power of love, the marital crisis brought on by chronic illness, the role of dumb luck at the heart of life–Gallagher dramatizes her stories with acute insight, strong feeling, and edgy wit.
A delicate and darkly witty reflection on loss, marriage, writing, and life in New York from an acclaimed biographer and memoirist. Dorothy Gallagher’s husband, Ben Sonnenberg, died in 2010. He had suffered from multiple sclerosis for many years and was almost completely paralyzed, but his wonderful, playful mind remained quite undimmed. In the ten sections of Stories I Forgot to Tell You, Gallagher moves freely and intuitively between the present and the past to evoke the life they made together and her life after his death, alone and yet at the same time never without thoughts of him, in a present that is haunted but also comforted by the recollection of their common past. She talks—the whole book is written conversationally, confidingly, unpretentiously—about small things, such as moving into a new apartment and setting it up, growing tomatoes on a new deck, and as she does she recalls her missing husband’s elegant clothes and British affectations, what she knew about him and didn’t know, the devastating toll of his disease and the ways they found to deal with it. She talks about their two dogs and their cat, Bones, and the role that a photograph she never took had in bringing her together with her husband. Her mother, eventually succumbing to dementia, is also here, along with friends, an old typewriter, episodes from a writing life, and her husband’s last days. The stories Gallagher has to tell, as quirky as they are profound, could not be more ordinary, and yet her glancing, wry approach to memory and life gives them an extraordinary resonance that makes the reader feel both the logic and the mystery of a couple’s common existence. Her prose is perfectly pitched and her eye for detail unerring. This slim book about irremediable loss and unending love distills the essence of a lifetime.
Dorothy Gallagher’s critically acclaimed memoir, How I Came Into My Inheritance, told of her childhood in 1940s New York as the daughter of left-wing Russian Jewish immigrants. Time magazine called it “a piercingly funny book . . . unsentimental, breezy, blunt.” In Strangers in the House, this brilliant stylist takes us into her adult life and tells us honest, funny, and highly distinctive stories about love, friendship, and responsibilities–stories about ordinary life told in an extraordinarily compelling voice. As she puts it, with typical wryness, “Oh my goodness, the themes you stumble over as you make your way from day to day. Trust, Betrayal, Class, Hypocrisy, Love, Hate, Greed, Sickness, Health. It only needs War and Peace.” Here, among other people and problems, we encounter a man who carries around brass knuckles, hoping to catch the lover Gallagher prefers to him–and whose behavior unexpectedly mirrors Gallagher’s own; the bizarre events that surround the disappearance of a woman with ties to both the Communist Party and Gallagher’s family; and the treachery of a trusted employee who is “bad with money” in more ways than one. The fragility of friendships, the fickleness of love, the marital crisis brought on by chronic illness–Gallagher dramatizes these universal themes with unique feeling, insight, and humor. This is a writer who will turn readers who come to her book as strangers into friends.
Dorothy Gallagher began her literary career fabricating stories about celebrities for a pulp magazine. Nothing she invented, however, could rival the facts surrounding her own family. In a singular voice–intimate, fierce, hilarious–Gallagher takes you into the heart of her Russian Jewish heritage with stories as elegant and stylish as fiction. From the wrenching last stages of her parents’ lives, Gallagher moves back through time: to her parents’ beginnings, the adventures of her extended family, and the communist ideology to which they cling. Her aunt Lily sells lingerie to prostitutes; a family friend is found murdered in a bathtub; her cousin Meyer returns to the Ukraine to find his village near death from starvation; and a young Gallagher endures sessions in self-criticism at a Workers’ Children’s camp. Together these episodes tell the larger story of a generation living through tumultuous history, and record the acts of loving defiance of a daughter on her path to independence.
In How I Came into My Inheritance, the author describes growing up in Washington Heights as a member of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family with left-wing political leanings, and in Strangers in the House, anecdotes and reminiscences recall the people the author has known and the relationships she has experienced. Original.
Glamorous, talented, audacious—Lillian Hellman knew everyone, did everything, had been everywhere. By the age of twenty-nine she had written The Children’s Hour, the first of four hit Broadway plays, and soon she was considered a member of America’s first rank of dramatists, a position she maintained for more than twenty-five years. Apart from her literary accomplishments—eight original plays and three volumes of memoirs—Hellman lived a rich life filled with notable friendships, controversial political activity, travel, and love affairs, most importantly with Dashiell Hammett. But by the time she died, the truth about her life and works had been called into question. Scandals attached to her name, having to do with sex, with money, and with her own veracity. Dorothy Gallagher confronts the conundrum that was Lillian Hellman—a woman with a capacity to inspire outrage as often as admiration. Exploring Hellman’s leftist politics, her Jewish and Southern background, and her famous testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Gallagher also undertakes a new reading of Hellman’s carefully crafted memoirs and plays, in which she is both revealed and hidden. Gallagher sorts through the facts and the myths, arriving at a sharply drawn portrait of a woman who lived large to the end of her remarkable life and never backed down from a fight.
Artist Edward Sorel created a wonderful, witty mural to grace the walls of The Waverly Inn, the famed New York eatery. Each of the 40 individuals depicted in the mural is presented here with a charming, telling vignette of his or her life. Full-color illustrations throughout.
Here are two acclaimed memoirs in one remarkable volume. In an extraordinarily compelling voice, Dorothy Gallagher tells stories taking us from her parents’ beginnings in the Ukraine to her own childhood in 1940s New York, through the many adventures of her extended family and into her own adult life. Her themes are universal: the fragility of friendship, the power of love, the marital crisis brought on by chronic illness, the role of dumb luck at the heart of life–Gallagher dramatizes her stories with acute insight, strong feeling, and edgy wit.
In a letter to her mother 75 years ago, Dorothy L. Sayers offered a first glimpse of the novel that launched one of our most admired detectives, Lord Peter Wimsey. Here is the long-desired collection of intimate thoughts and ideas that shaped the early years of this remarkable writer. These letters paint a revealing portrait of one of the most fascinating women of our time.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.