Cherise Wolas's Blog, page 4
September 2, 2018
New York Times Book Review about THE FAMILY TABOR
"Intriguing...
Wolas illuminates the rich, complex histories of the older Tabor generations, when they were Tabornikovs, and the sense of loyalty one's family history is so vivid it is practically its own character."
-New York Times Book Review
Wolas illuminates the rich, complex histories of the older Tabor generations, when they were Tabornikovs, and the sense of loyalty one's family history is so vivid it is practically its own character."
-New York Times Book Review
September 1, 2018
HOW WE SPEND OUR DAYS, AN ESSAY BY CHERISE WOLAS FOR "CATCHING DAYS" A FANTASTIC WRITERS' SERIES
Cynthia Newberry Martin runs the fantastic writers' series called "How We Spend Our Days." I'm honored to the September guest writer.
https://wp.me/pjPSw-5Vf
https://wp.me/pjPSw-5Vf
August 27, 2018
HOW WE SPEND OUR DAYS, A SERIES OF WRITER ESSAYS, CHECK OUT THE PREVIEW
Check out this beautiful preview!
September 1, 2018: Cherise Wolas
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby was published last August, a friend gave it to me for Christmas, and I devoured it over Memorial Day. If anyone is looking for a grand finale to their summer reading, this big, thick book is it.
Joan Ashby is a famous writer, and the novel opens with an article about her. According to the article, one of her early notebooks was entitled How to Do It–the young Joan’s plan for success. Here are three of her nine admonitions: Don’t waste time, don’t entertain offers of marriage, and never have children.
She only wanted what belonged to her–what she created, her characters, her people, those with whom she spent the clearest hours of her days. It was, she thought, the way to make that truest part of herself whole once again.
The article includes excerpts of Joan’s writing, one of which, I now notice, is about Simon Tabor, a character in Cherise’s second novel, which was published last month (yes, less than a year after her debut).
On the second page of Joan Ashby, also in the article and not a spoiler but part of the set-up, we learn that it’s been “nearly three decades since Joan Ashby published anything new.” What in the heck happened I immediately wanted to know. Brilliant.
Page after page, I couldn’t stop reading. And then, in the middle of this book of 529 pages, the one thing that could not happen happens. Brilliant.
No matter how much she drinks, the adrenaline of rage is keeping her sober.
As opposed to decades, The Family Tabor, Cherise’s second novel, takes place over a weekend. And instead of predominantly one point of view, we are up close and personal, from the beginning, with each of five family members–mom, dad, and the three children–Phoebe, Camille, and Simon. All of these lovely differences hint at Cherise’s range as a writer. And there’s more. In this book, so far, it’s the character-slanted descriptions, rather than the story, that are drawing me in.
About an apartment: “home with a very small h and all that she needed.”
About a pile of bobby pins: “In the two years since Isabel’s birth, he has often considered whether her tightly coiled hair, her adopted uniform, indicates the practicality of doubled motherhood or something far more charged–proof that the loss of her freedom is so wild within her that she must keep herself regimented and pinned together.
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby was a semifinalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Debut Fiction Prize, an Indie Next Great Reads Pick, and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. It was also named a Best Novel and Best Debut Novel of the year by Kirkus Reviews and a Top 10 novel of 2017 by Booklist.
In a Publishers Weekly interview, Cherise tells us a little about her life.
I’ve written since childhood. I was a lawyer when I wrote a first novel, and I left the firm to revise it, but ended up founding a film company, where I acquired and developed the scripts, stories, and novels of others. Then I thought, “Why am I working on other people’s words when my own are what I want to be working on?”
Cherise was born in LA and now lives in NYC with her husband. Check out what she’s reading, then,
Come back on SEPTEMBER 1st to read how CHERISE WOLAS spends her days.
http://bit.ly/2LugX1q
September 1, 2018: Cherise Wolas
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby was published last August, a friend gave it to me for Christmas, and I devoured it over Memorial Day. If anyone is looking for a grand finale to their summer reading, this big, thick book is it.
Joan Ashby is a famous writer, and the novel opens with an article about her. According to the article, one of her early notebooks was entitled How to Do It–the young Joan’s plan for success. Here are three of her nine admonitions: Don’t waste time, don’t entertain offers of marriage, and never have children.
She only wanted what belonged to her–what she created, her characters, her people, those with whom she spent the clearest hours of her days. It was, she thought, the way to make that truest part of herself whole once again.
The article includes excerpts of Joan’s writing, one of which, I now notice, is about Simon Tabor, a character in Cherise’s second novel, which was published last month (yes, less than a year after her debut).
On the second page of Joan Ashby, also in the article and not a spoiler but part of the set-up, we learn that it’s been “nearly three decades since Joan Ashby published anything new.” What in the heck happened I immediately wanted to know. Brilliant.
Page after page, I couldn’t stop reading. And then, in the middle of this book of 529 pages, the one thing that could not happen happens. Brilliant.
No matter how much she drinks, the adrenaline of rage is keeping her sober.
As opposed to decades, The Family Tabor, Cherise’s second novel, takes place over a weekend. And instead of predominantly one point of view, we are up close and personal, from the beginning, with each of five family members–mom, dad, and the three children–Phoebe, Camille, and Simon. All of these lovely differences hint at Cherise’s range as a writer. And there’s more. In this book, so far, it’s the character-slanted descriptions, rather than the story, that are drawing me in.
About an apartment: “home with a very small h and all that she needed.”
About a pile of bobby pins: “In the two years since Isabel’s birth, he has often considered whether her tightly coiled hair, her adopted uniform, indicates the practicality of doubled motherhood or something far more charged–proof that the loss of her freedom is so wild within her that she must keep herself regimented and pinned together.
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby was a semifinalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Debut Fiction Prize, an Indie Next Great Reads Pick, and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. It was also named a Best Novel and Best Debut Novel of the year by Kirkus Reviews and a Top 10 novel of 2017 by Booklist.
In a Publishers Weekly interview, Cherise tells us a little about her life.
I’ve written since childhood. I was a lawyer when I wrote a first novel, and I left the firm to revise it, but ended up founding a film company, where I acquired and developed the scripts, stories, and novels of others. Then I thought, “Why am I working on other people’s words when my own are what I want to be working on?”
Cherise was born in LA and now lives in NYC with her husband. Check out what she’s reading, then,
Come back on SEPTEMBER 1st to read how CHERISE WOLAS spends her days.
http://bit.ly/2LugX1q
August 16, 2018
WHAT IS CHERISE WOLAS READING? AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE AMERICAN READER.
Cherise Wolas is the author of The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, a semifinalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Debut Fiction Prize, an Indie Next Great Reads Pick, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, named a Best Novel and Best Debut Novel of the year by Kirkus Reviews, named a Top 10 novel of 2017 by Booklist, in addition to receiving among many other accolades.
Wolas's new novel is The Family Tabor.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:
What I’m reading:
I was a one-book-at-a-time girl, but when I got married, my husband gave me a Kindle, saying, “It would be so nice if sometimes I could go to sleep in the dark.” So now I read one novel in book form, and another at night on my Kindle. But lately, and unusually, I find myself dipped into many books (just starting, in the middle of, just finishing, and itching to start) probably because I’m book-tour traveling for The Family Tabor. This is just a sampling; there are several more books I could add in under each heading! And because I’m always asked for book recommendations, I’m maintaining a running list of the books that most affect me on my website.
What I’m just starting:
Far From The Tree: Parents, Children and The Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon. I’ve had this massive tome on my bookshelves since it first came out in paperback years ago, and I’m now reading it one full section at a time. Solomon did extraordinary research interviewing more than 300 families with “exceptional” children; children with “horizontal identities,” his term that encompasses all the “recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors.” It is a psycho-sociological study, yes, but highly readable, mysterious, passionate, immensely affecting, and emotionally resonant. And Solomon threads his own personal story through it. It is one thing to feel ourselves different from our families, quite another to be actually absolutely different from our families. Love shines through it, as well as the tremendous difficulties. And puts the lie to Tolstoy’s maxim about happy and unhappy families.
What I’m in the middle of:
Property by Lionel Shriver. This is Shriver’s first collection (stories bookended by two novellas), and the stories are intelligent, insightful, ironic, dense with details, sharp, and often very funny. The collection feels unified to me, more than most, because Shriver thoroughly explores her theme which is about ownership: about how we do—or do not—possess things like homes, land, money, empty nests, and ourselves. This thematic commitment allows the stories to communicate with one another in unusual ways, and I’ve been finding there is a fluidity to the actual reading, rather than the stop-start I often experience with collections.
What I’ve just finished:
Kudos by Rachel Cusk. The third book in the trilogy that includes Outline and Transit. The narrator, Faye, whose name is used only once in each book, is a middle-aged writer, astute, but curiously passive, and seems to reflect back those who feel compelled to tell her their own stories. Indeed, each book is composed nearly entirely of highly eloquent and intellectually abstracted conversation, via stories that are often fascinating. Faye’s own side of the conversation is mostly elided. Each volume is back-grounded in the literary fiction world. Faye is teaching a writing workshop in Greece in Outline, at a literary festival in Transit, and touring for her recent unnamed and un-summarized new book in Kudos. She herself progresses: divorced, renovating her home, remarrying, her boys grow into teenagers, and she is both a present and absent mother; but for the most part, these personal progressions are simply remarked on. Topics such as power, powerlessness, freedom and fate, love and its opposite, are within these novels. Kudos has an exceptionally powerful ending. Many reviews and essays have been written about Cusk’s trilogy, so I’ll stop here.
Also Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller. A layered, strange, ripe tale about love, loss, and family. Ingrid Coleman, wife and mother, has been missing for 12 years; she went swimming one day and never returned. In her absence, the family has soldiered on. Flora, the younger daughter, is a lost soul; Nan, the older daughter and a nurse, has played mother to her sister, and their father, Gil Coleman, known for a scandalous novel he wrote long ago, might be fading. The contemporary story is interwoven with letters Ingrid wrote to her husband, then tucked into the folds of books, massive stacks of which have taken over the family’s house by the sea.
What I’m itching to start:
The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vasquez. Recently, I was at a book event for The Family Tabor at Little City Books in Hoboken, NJ, and the lovely owner gave me the galley of this newest Vasquez, coming out in translation in September. According to the galley flyleaf, the book “explores the darkest moments of a country’s turbulent history and reveals the ways in which past violence shapes present lives.” Vasquez has become one of my favorite writers. I discovered him two years ago, and absolutely loved the novels The Sound of Things Falling and Reputations, and the story collection, Lovers on All Saints’ Day. I rarely reread, but have all three stacked up to reread. Lovers is a collection set in forests, on hunts, on stately properties, with marvelous details of gestures and objects that flesh out the characters as they move about lost and distant, defined by their struggles and usually by the failures of their romantic relationships. Many of these stories have stayed with me. Vasquez is very different from Gabriel García Márquez; he rejects the vivid colors and uses instead a noir-ish palette. The Sound of Things Falling is a compelling page-turner, but also a deep and hushed meditation on fate and on death. The novel is built on Colombia’s tragic history as a country enriched and destroyed by drugs, but has as its core the story of Antonio, a young and newly married professor of jurisprudence, who unwinds by playing billiards, and befriends an older man, Laverde, rumored to be recently released from prison, and it goes on from there, or rather it goes both forward and backwards, into memory, lies, fabrications, and truth. Reputations is about Javier Mallarino, a famous and feared political cartoonist, and about an event that may or may not have happened 28 years earlier. Again, it deals with the past, with memory, and fabrication, with finding the truth. Vasquez is a master of patient pacing and intricate structure, which I adore.
Also The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar, a sequel to her beautiful and heartbreaking novel, The Space Between Us. I read Space when it first came out. Set in Bombay, it’s about the personal and class-distinctive relationship between Sera, the housekeeper with a tragic life, and Bhima, the middle-class Parsi widow who employs her. I might have to reread Space before starting The Secrets Between Us, which continues these women’s relationship.
Visit Cherise Wolas's website.
https://whatarewritersreading.blogspo...
Wolas's new novel is The Family Tabor.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:
What I’m reading:
I was a one-book-at-a-time girl, but when I got married, my husband gave me a Kindle, saying, “It would be so nice if sometimes I could go to sleep in the dark.” So now I read one novel in book form, and another at night on my Kindle. But lately, and unusually, I find myself dipped into many books (just starting, in the middle of, just finishing, and itching to start) probably because I’m book-tour traveling for The Family Tabor. This is just a sampling; there are several more books I could add in under each heading! And because I’m always asked for book recommendations, I’m maintaining a running list of the books that most affect me on my website.
What I’m just starting:
Far From The Tree: Parents, Children and The Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon. I’ve had this massive tome on my bookshelves since it first came out in paperback years ago, and I’m now reading it one full section at a time. Solomon did extraordinary research interviewing more than 300 families with “exceptional” children; children with “horizontal identities,” his term that encompasses all the “recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors.” It is a psycho-sociological study, yes, but highly readable, mysterious, passionate, immensely affecting, and emotionally resonant. And Solomon threads his own personal story through it. It is one thing to feel ourselves different from our families, quite another to be actually absolutely different from our families. Love shines through it, as well as the tremendous difficulties. And puts the lie to Tolstoy’s maxim about happy and unhappy families.
What I’m in the middle of:
Property by Lionel Shriver. This is Shriver’s first collection (stories bookended by two novellas), and the stories are intelligent, insightful, ironic, dense with details, sharp, and often very funny. The collection feels unified to me, more than most, because Shriver thoroughly explores her theme which is about ownership: about how we do—or do not—possess things like homes, land, money, empty nests, and ourselves. This thematic commitment allows the stories to communicate with one another in unusual ways, and I’ve been finding there is a fluidity to the actual reading, rather than the stop-start I often experience with collections.
What I’ve just finished:
Kudos by Rachel Cusk. The third book in the trilogy that includes Outline and Transit. The narrator, Faye, whose name is used only once in each book, is a middle-aged writer, astute, but curiously passive, and seems to reflect back those who feel compelled to tell her their own stories. Indeed, each book is composed nearly entirely of highly eloquent and intellectually abstracted conversation, via stories that are often fascinating. Faye’s own side of the conversation is mostly elided. Each volume is back-grounded in the literary fiction world. Faye is teaching a writing workshop in Greece in Outline, at a literary festival in Transit, and touring for her recent unnamed and un-summarized new book in Kudos. She herself progresses: divorced, renovating her home, remarrying, her boys grow into teenagers, and she is both a present and absent mother; but for the most part, these personal progressions are simply remarked on. Topics such as power, powerlessness, freedom and fate, love and its opposite, are within these novels. Kudos has an exceptionally powerful ending. Many reviews and essays have been written about Cusk’s trilogy, so I’ll stop here.
Also Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller. A layered, strange, ripe tale about love, loss, and family. Ingrid Coleman, wife and mother, has been missing for 12 years; she went swimming one day and never returned. In her absence, the family has soldiered on. Flora, the younger daughter, is a lost soul; Nan, the older daughter and a nurse, has played mother to her sister, and their father, Gil Coleman, known for a scandalous novel he wrote long ago, might be fading. The contemporary story is interwoven with letters Ingrid wrote to her husband, then tucked into the folds of books, massive stacks of which have taken over the family’s house by the sea.
What I’m itching to start:
The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vasquez. Recently, I was at a book event for The Family Tabor at Little City Books in Hoboken, NJ, and the lovely owner gave me the galley of this newest Vasquez, coming out in translation in September. According to the galley flyleaf, the book “explores the darkest moments of a country’s turbulent history and reveals the ways in which past violence shapes present lives.” Vasquez has become one of my favorite writers. I discovered him two years ago, and absolutely loved the novels The Sound of Things Falling and Reputations, and the story collection, Lovers on All Saints’ Day. I rarely reread, but have all three stacked up to reread. Lovers is a collection set in forests, on hunts, on stately properties, with marvelous details of gestures and objects that flesh out the characters as they move about lost and distant, defined by their struggles and usually by the failures of their romantic relationships. Many of these stories have stayed with me. Vasquez is very different from Gabriel García Márquez; he rejects the vivid colors and uses instead a noir-ish palette. The Sound of Things Falling is a compelling page-turner, but also a deep and hushed meditation on fate and on death. The novel is built on Colombia’s tragic history as a country enriched and destroyed by drugs, but has as its core the story of Antonio, a young and newly married professor of jurisprudence, who unwinds by playing billiards, and befriends an older man, Laverde, rumored to be recently released from prison, and it goes on from there, or rather it goes both forward and backwards, into memory, lies, fabrications, and truth. Reputations is about Javier Mallarino, a famous and feared political cartoonist, and about an event that may or may not have happened 28 years earlier. Again, it deals with the past, with memory, and fabrication, with finding the truth. Vasquez is a master of patient pacing and intricate structure, which I adore.
Also The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar, a sequel to her beautiful and heartbreaking novel, The Space Between Us. I read Space when it first came out. Set in Bombay, it’s about the personal and class-distinctive relationship between Sera, the housekeeper with a tragic life, and Bhima, the middle-class Parsi widow who employs her. I might have to reread Space before starting The Secrets Between Us, which continues these women’s relationship.
Visit Cherise Wolas's website.
https://whatarewritersreading.blogspo...
August 13, 2018
Page 69 Test of THE FAMILY TABOR for AMERICAREADS
Is P. 69 representational or not in a novel. See what Cherise Wolas says about p. 69 in THE FAMILY TABOR.
https://page69test.blogspot.com/2018/...
https://page69test.blogspot.com/2018/...
August 12, 2018
August 11, 2018
BUSTLE SAYS THE FAMILY TABOR IS NOT TO BE MISSED
"In this slow-burning thriller, the powerful Tabor family gathers to celebrate its patriarch, Harry, who is about to be named Man of the Decade. But it doesn't take long for the facade of perfection to begin to show cracks as personal secrets start to seep out over the course of a tense weekend that will change everything. A fascinating story about family, faith, and loyalty. THE FAMILY TABOR is not to be missed."
https://bit.ly/2nAqJ8N
https://bit.ly/2nAqJ8N
August 10, 2018
August 8, 2018
August 1, 2018
THE FAMILY TABOR IS TWO WEEKS OLD
THE FAMILY TABOR is two weeks old. I'm incredibly thrilled by all the emails and messages from readers who have taken the Tabors into their hearts.
If you haven't nabbed a copy, it's in bookstores far and wide.
If you'd like a signed copy, order from @interabangbooks (TX), @littlecitybooks (NJ), @thecountrybookshop (NC), or @thecornerbookstore (NY).
It's been a wonderful two weeks. And it is still the #1 New Release on Amazon in Jewish Literature, though it's a family drama for everyone!
Thank you for posting stellar reviews with all the stars on Goodreads and Amazon. Great high-starred reviews are so helpful to this author and all authors.
Thank you everyone!
If you haven't nabbed a copy, it's in bookstores far and wide.
If you'd like a signed copy, order from @interabangbooks (TX), @littlecitybooks (NJ), @thecountrybookshop (NC), or @thecornerbookstore (NY).
It's been a wonderful two weeks. And it is still the #1 New Release on Amazon in Jewish Literature, though it's a family drama for everyone!
Thank you for posting stellar reviews with all the stars on Goodreads and Amazon. Great high-starred reviews are so helpful to this author and all authors.
Thank you everyone!
