And now for something completely different:
Vicki Forman —
aka Special Needs Ma, regular Dissent reader, sometimes commentator, writer, writing professor (go Trojans!) and, yes, community college student! — will be reading from her book
This Lovely Life tonight at 6 PM at Laguna Beach Books (located in the Old Pottery Barn off PCH).
Vicki's book won the the Bakeless Prize and has been garnering rave reveiws from many quarters:
San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, Dallas Morning News, Salon, etc.. Here's a couple selections:
“Elle’s Lettres,” Readers Prize, August 2009:
"Forman’s account of giving birth to premature twins is stark, heartbreaking, and beautiful. Thrust into a role that on one expects to play, she becomes at once a parent, an expert in medical terminology, and a spectator to her own life. She invites us to witness as she wrestles with decisions that nobody should have to make, but does so with amazing poise and honestly."
Meg Wolitzer, author of
The Ten Year Nap and
Surrender, Dorothy:
“It would be difficult not to be stirred by Vicki Forman’s story; but what makes This Lovely Life so good goes well past story and into idea, with which her book is so rich. The idea of love; of choice; of ambivalence; of imperfection; of purpose: these are all here, in a narrative that is propulsive, startling and vivid, like motherhood itself.”
Vicki will be reading with Victoria Patterson. Patterson's debut collection of short stories,
Drift, is the book about Orange County that Rebel Girl has been waiting for someone to write.
From
Booklist:
"Set against the affluence of Newport Beach, Patterson’s debut collection often focuses on the enclaves’ outcasts--waitstaff, divorcées, alcoholics, and drug addicts—as her characters confront personal battles, the limits of friendship, and the bleary anticipation of a different way of life. In “Castaways,” a newly separated father resists coming to terms with his impending divorce, especially when it comes to the changing relationship with his young son. In “Holloway’s: Part One,” a waitress risks her job to help one of the restaurant’s psuedoproprietors, self-destructive Willy, the only way she knows how. Many of Patterson’s loosely linked stories follow the introspective Rosie as she grows from an insecure, lonely child struggling with her parents’ divorce and mother’s adultery to an adolescent exploring the bounds of sexuality and friendship and, eventually, to a hard-partying community college student living in a seedy apartment complex. Her only constant in life is a homeless skateboarder named John Wayne, who offers quiet companionship in the face of Rosie’s isolation. Patterson’s 13 engaging tales offer keen perspectives on life lived on the fringe."
If you are so inclined and your schedule permits, this powerful duo is worth the drive to Laguna Beach this evening. And Laguna itself promises to be as lovely as ever on this late summer evening...Hope to see you there.
Laguna Beach Books
1200 S. PCH (at Brooks)
telephone: 949-494-4779
