Skylight Books Podcast Series

Ball (Soft Skull Press) Tara Ison's Ball is the thrilling and emotionally provocative debut collection of short fiction by the acclaimed author of the novels Rockaway  and A Child Out of Alcatraz and the essay collection Reeling through Life. Ball explores the darker edges of love and sex and death, how they are intimately and often violently connected, with bright, vivid stories set mostly in contemporary Los Angeles. In "Cactus," a young girl comes to fear the outside world following the freakish, accidental death of her adventure-seeking, naturalist boyfriend in the California desert; in "Wig," a woman must help her best friend face life-threatening cancer while covering up an unseemly affair with her friend's husband; in "Fish," the narrator sits watch over a dying uncle, trying to pay for past sins while administering to his final needs, but distracted by the ravenous fish in the Koi pond near the hospital; and in the collection's stunning title story, the bonds of friendship and pet ownership collide in the most startling and unexpected ways.  With a keen insight into the edges of human behavior and an assured literary hand, Ball is the new book by one of the West's most provocative stylists. Praise for Ball  "The stories in Ball take place at the far limits of obsession and desire and lust, exploring the dangers of turning toward the kinds of love we have tried always to refuse. Tara Ison is a fearless writer, and her bravery before the dark urges of the heart thrills on every page."--Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods  "Tara Ison is the mistress of bad behavior. She divines the beauty in darkness. She twists the familiar--a friendship, an apology--till something fantastic cracks. And she will have you in thrall to her gorgeous language. The stories in Ball are exquisite and harrowing. Must read straight through. Must remember to breathe." --Dylan Landis, author of Rainey Royal Tara Ison is the author of the novels The List, A Child Out of Alcatraz, a Finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, andRockaway, selected as a "2013 Best Books of Summer" by "O Magazine." Her short fiction and essays have appeared in "Tin House," "The Kenyon Review," Nerve.com, "Publishers Weekly," and numerous anthologies. She is the co-author of the cult film "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead."

Shooting Women: Behind the Camera, Around the World (Intellect UK) Shooting Women takes readers around the world to explore the lives of camerawomen working in features, TV news, and documentaries. From first world pioneers like African American camerawoman Jessie Maple Patton who got her job only after suing the union - to China’s first camerawomen, who travelled with Mao – to rural India where poor women have learned camerawork as a means of empowerment, Shooting Women reveals a world of women working with courage and skill in a male-dominated field. “In the end, although this book is many things, it is neither a report on work relations nor a work of feminist film theory. On the basis of what camerawomen say, we reach some analytical conclusions throughout the book as well as at the end, when we sum up what this history has taught us about strategic options available to increase women’s role in the media behind the camera. Along with a history of women’s involvement in camerawork, we provide information on how the professional camerawomen got to be where they are and what advice they have for women who would like to work professionally behind the camera.”- Harriet Margolis  Alexis Krasilovsky is the writer/director of the global documentary, Women Behind the Camera(http://womenbehindthecamera.com) and Professor in the Department of Cinema and Television Arts at California State University, Northridge. The winner of the 2011 Joe Hill Award for labor poetry, Julia Stein, as book editor, has published Walking Through a River of Fir: 100 Years of Triangle Poetry and Every Day is an Act of Resistance: Selected Poetry of Carol Tarlen. Her fifth and most recent book of poetry is titled What Were They Like?

Please join us for the roundtable discussion, Beyond Lolita: Literary Writers on Sex and Sexuality. The proceeds will benefit PEN American Center and its Writers' Emergency Fund. Joining us will be Robin Rinaldi, Wendy C. Ortiz, J. Ryan Stradal, and Julia Fierro.  Moderated by Anna March, these events will be taking place in Boston, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland this coming November and January. Cheryl Strayed, Audrey Niffenegger, Rachel DeWoskin, Cathi Hanauer, Megan Stielstra, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, Elissa Schappell, Daniel Jones, Luis Urrea, Ashley Ford, Lidia Yuknavitch and many others are participating around the country. The events will be free but attendees will be encouraged to join and support PEN, and an additional $500 will be donated to PEN for each event to support its emergency fund for writers. Robin Rinaldi is a journalist and author of The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost. Before she left her day job to write a book, Robin was executive editor at 7x7, a San Francisco city magazine. Prior to that she wrote an award-winning food column for Philadelphia Weekly. Robin has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Oprah Magazine, Yoga Journal, and others. Robin grew up in a small Pennsylvania town but has spent most of her life in California. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she writes, reads, cooks peasant-style meals, does a lot of yoga, listens to a lot of music, watches a lot of premium cable dramas, and plays with her scruffy little terrier named Tengo (after the protagonist in 1Q84). Wendy C. Ortiz is a Los Angeles native. She is the author of Excavation: A Memoir, Hollywood Notebook, and the forthcoming Bruja. Wendy holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. A Writer-in-Residence at Hedgebrook in 2007 and 2009, Wendy is also co-founder and curator of the Rhapsodomancy Reading Series. She has read and given talks at California State University Chico, University of California Santa Barbara, University of California Riverside's Low-Residency M.F.A. Program, and Lock Haven University. Wendy has been an adjunct faculty in creative writing and has also facilitated creative writing workshops with Los Angeles youth in juvenile detention facilities. While living in Olympia, Washington, she was a library worker, editor and publisher of 4th Street, a handbound literary journal, and an occasional mudwrestler. Wendy received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where she lived for eight years before returning to Los Angeles.She is at work on a book based on her Modern Love essay published in The New York Times, a short story collection, and other projects. Wendy is represented by Bridget Wagner Matzie of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. She parents and works as a registered marriage and family therapist intern in Los Angeles. J. Ryan Stradal’s first novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, was published by Viking / Pamela Dorman Books on July 28th, 2015, and reached the New York Times Hardcover Best Seller list at #19 on its third week of release. In November 2014, the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society awarded Kitchens of the Great Midwest first prize in their annual novel competition. In September 2015, Warner Bros. optioned the film/TV rights. A selection of his short stories, compiled under the title "Nerd & Whore are Friends," was a 2013 finalist in the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. His short fiction has also been anthologized, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and named a finalist for the James Kirkwood Literary Prize. He works as the fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown  and  as an editor-at-large at Unnamed Press in Los Angeles.  He was also editor of the 2014 California Prose Directory, an anthology of writing about California by California writers, published by Outpost19. He volunteers for & is on the advisory board of the educational non-profit 826LA. He also helps make products and materials for their affiliated store, the Echo Park Time Travel Mart. He likes books, wine, sports, root beer, and peas.  Julia Fierro is the author of Cutting Teeth, which The New Yorker called “a comically energetic debut novel.” Her next novel, The Gypsy Moth Summer, will be published in 2017. Julia founded The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop in 2002, and it has since grown into a creative home to over 2,500 writers. She lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

Killing and Dying (Drawn & Quarterly) Kiling and Dying is a stunning showcase of the possibilities of the graphic novel medium and a wry exploration of loss, creative ambition, identity, and family dynamics. With this work, Adrian Tomine reaffirms his place not only as one of the most significant creators of contemporary comics, but as one of the great voices of modern American literature. His gift for capturing emotion and intellect resonates here: the weight of love and its absence, the pride and disappointment of family, the anxiety and hopefulness of being alive in the twenty-first century. “Amber Sweet” shows the disastrous impact of mistaken identity in a hyper-connected world; “A Brief History of the Art Form Known as Hortisculpture” details the invention and destruction of a vital new art form in short comic strips; “Translated, from the Japanese,” is a lush, full-color display of storytelling through still images; the title story, "Killing and Dying", centers on parenthood, mortality, and stand-up comedy. In six interconnected, darkly funny stories, Tomine forms a quietly moving portrait of contemporary life. Adrian Tomine is a master of the small gesture, equally deft at signaling emotion via a subtle change of expression or writ large across landscapes illustrated in full color. Killing and Dying is a fraught, realist masterpiece. Praise for Optic Nerve “Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve [is] smart, understated and with a subtle yet pointed bite . . . Merging straight realism with an impressionistic sense of narrative, his stories are . . . highly structured and defined.” —Los Angeles Times “[Optic Nerve] is a sumptuous showcase of Tomine’s precision draftsmanship.” —A.V. Club Adrian Tomine was born in 1974 in Sacramento, California. He began self-publishing his comic book series Optic Nerve. His comics have been anthologized in publications such as McSweeney’s, Best American Comics, and Best American Non-required Reading, and his graphic novel Shortcomings was a New York Times Notable Book of 2007. Since 1999, Tomine has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters. Tunde Adebimpe is a musician, actor, director, and visual artist best known as the lead singer of the critically acclaimed band Tv on the Radio. In addition to releasing the band's most recent record "Seeds", he recently collaborated with Brooklyn's Kayrock Screenprinting to release "Tour Sketch Journos 2003-2014" a patchwork collection of drawings and writing from sketchbooks and journals kept during his years on the road with TVOTR from its inception to present day. 

Bream Gives Me Hiccups (Grove/Atlantic) Jesse Eisenberg is known for acclaimed acting roles in The Social Network, The Squid and the Whale, and other films, but his writing talents are no less impressive. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s and in the New Yorker and he is the author of three plays, including The Revisionist, which starred Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave. Now in his whip-smart fiction debut Bream Gives Me Hiccups Eisenberg delivers a collection of forty-four hilarious, moving, and inventive stories that explore the various insanities of the modern world.  NOTE: As with all Skylight Books in-store events, this reading is free and open to the public (first come, first served).  But because we're expecting a large crowd at this event, we'll be giving out numbered tickets to the signing line to keep things organized: To get a ticket to the signing line, you must purchase a copy of Bream Gives Me Hiccups here at Skylight Books. Starting September 8, you can buy books (and get your signing line ticket) in person, by phone, or via our website. Web pre-orders can also be picked up starting the 8th. For all website orders for this event, be sure to leave a note in the Order Comments field if you'd like a signing line ticket. Can't attend? If you would like a signed book but will not be able to attend, click Signed Copy after adding the book to your cart and we'll do our best to get it signed for you. You  may pick up this book in the store after the event, or have it shipped to you. Skylight's Friends with Benefits members get priority signing line tickets (and 20% off this and all other event books each month), so be sure to mention your membership (or join) when you order the book. Jesse Eisenberg will sign and personalize ONLY Bream Gives me Hiccups and his plays--no memorabilia, posters, DVDs, fan art, etc. Jesse Eisenberg will also take photographs while signing--no posed photographs.  Thank you for your cooperation!  Bream Gives Me Hiccups gets its unusual title from the set of stories that begin the book, restaurant reviews written by a nine-year-old child who is taken out for expensive meals by his newly divorced mother. The stories then move from contemporary L.A. to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the reader into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece, a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by the man’s sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide (The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karađorđevo agreement); in another, a college freshman forced to live with a roommate is stunned when one of her ramen packets goes missing (She didn’t have “one” of my ramens. She had a chicken ramen); in another piece, Alexander Graham Bell has teething problems with his invention (I’ve been calling Mabel all day, she doesn’t pick up! Yes, of course I dialed the right number – 2!).  United by Eisenberg’s gift for humor and character, and grouped into chapters that open with illustrations by award-winning cartoonist Jean Jullien, the witty pieces collected in Bream Gives Me Hiccups mark the arrival of a fantastically funny, self-ironic, and original voice. Praise for Bream Gives Me Hiccups “Brilliantly witty, deeply intelligent, and just plain hilarious. If David Sedaris wrote about Carmelo Anthony, Bosnian genocide, and ramen-stealing college freshmen, it would probably come out something like Jesse Eisenberg’s Bream Gives Me Hiccups. A moving portrait of human beings at their weaker moments, and a wonderful send-up of the insanities of modern America.” —Sherman Alexie “Eisenberg has a terrific ear, especially for adolescent inflections, absurdity, self-delusion, and insecurity. He also has a flair for off-the-wall ideas . . . With its panoply of neurotics and narcissists and its smart mix of stinging satire and surprising moments of sweetness, Bream Gives Me Hiccups brings to mind fellow comic actor/writers Woody Allen, Steve Martin and B.J. Novak. It also offers a youthful new twist on what one of Eisenberg’s hopeless dreamers refers to—ironically, of course—as the cruel ‘irony of life.’”—NPR Books “Compelling . . . A fascinating look into the minds of misfits . . . Whether it’s Alexander Graham Bell bumbling through his first phone calls or Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks pacifying a fan, Eisenberg’s ability to create interesting and entertaining dialogue as if the exchange actually occurred is impressive . . . Eisenberg’s wit jumps off the page . . . Bream Gives Me Hiccups is a delightful collection of awkward scenarios twisted into humorous, witty and sometimes poignant life lessons. It’s simultaneously smart, clever and creative.”—Associated Press “Eisenberg’s strength is in dialogue and monologue, and in writing miserable characters who alternately compel (like a 9-year-old from a broken home who writes restaurant reviews) and repel (like Harper, the footnote-obsessed freshman Eisenberg lovingly describes as ‘maladjusted’) . . . Eisenberg is uncannily good at capturing a specific breed of insincere teen girl.”—Entertainment Weekly “Jesse Eisenberg is a deeply original comic voice. These stories are about the funniness, sadness, and strangeness of everyday life and they really made me laugh.”—Roz Chast A great book . . . The first part of the book [is] a series of restaurant reviews Eisenberg writes in the voice of a privileged nine-year old. The reviews are hilarious but gradually reveal a moving portrait of a lonely boy’s bond with his single mom. All the stories seem to work on multiple levels like that.”—Arun Rath, “All Things Considered,” NPR “[Eisenberg’s] jittery on-screen energy seeps onto the pages of this book.”—Wall Street Journal (15 Books to Read This Fall) “Eisenberg’s 28 stories in Bream Gives Me Hiccups range from the diary of a nine-year-old food critic to letters about stolen ramen . . . Eisenberg’s characters are lively, and his awareness of universal neuroses (yours and his alike) shows he’s more than a hobbyist.”—Time  “He’s a walking ball of neuroses, a fledgling playwright, and now a short-story writer, telling tales covering subjects as varied as Pompeii and ramen.”—New York Magazine   “Charming, deftly written, and laugh-out-loud funny.” —Publishers Weekly “I’ve been a fan of Jesse Eisenberg’s plays for years and his prose is just as winning. Bream Gives Me Hiccups is hilarious, poignant and at times so self-deprecating it makes me want to give Jesse a hug. He’s taken decades of neurosis and spun it into comedy gold.”—Simon Rich “Eisenberg proves to be a compassionate chronicler of absurdity in the realms of family life, romance, and history.”—Booklist “Bream Gives Me Hiccups isn’t merely comic writing of the first order; it’s an often tender, highbrow-lowbrow mash-up that encompasses everything from Chomsky and Žižek to disastrous pickup lines and pubescent neuroses. Jesse Eisenberg writes with formidable intellect and verbal dexterity, but he also has something many deadeye satirists lack: empathy with his targets. To borrow his most unforgettable character’s line, you’ll want to give his debut collection 2000 out of 2000 stars.”—Teddy Wayne, author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine Jesse Eisenberg is an Academy Award–nominated actor, playwright, and contributor for the New Yorker andMcSweeney's. He is the author of three plays, Asuncion, The Revisionist, and The Spoils, which won the Theater Visions Fund Award. Eisenberg's acting credits include The Social Network, Now You See Me, Adventureland, The Squid and the Whale, The Double, and The End of the Tour. Forthcoming acting credits include Batman v. Superman.

Finale: The Reagan Years (Pantheon Books) From the author of the acclaimed novel Watergate,  comes a galvanizing new novel about the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president of modern times.  Finale takes readers to the political gridiron of Washington in 1986; the wealthiest enclaves of southern California; and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where the president engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev. Along with Soviet dissidents, illegal arms traders, and antinuclear activists, the novel's memorable characters include Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter, Pamela Harriman, John W. Hinckley, and even Bette Davis, with whom the president long ago appeared on screen. Several figures including a humbled, crafty Richard Nixon; the young, brilliantly acerbic Christopher Hitchens; and an anxious, astrology-dependent Nancy Reagan become the eyes through which readers see the last convulsions of the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, a clash of ideologies, and a political revolution. At the center of it all but forever out of reach is Reagan himself, whose genial remoteness confounds his subordinates, his children, and the citizens who elected him. Thomas Mallon is the author of nine novels, including Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers, andWatergate. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and The Atlantic, and he was the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Vursell prize for exceptional prose style. He has been the literary editor of GQ and the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Washington, D.C.   James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz,and the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s A Rover. These seven novels have won numerous honors and were international best sellers. His newest novel, Perfidia, is the first novel of the Second L.A. Quartet, Ellroy’s fictional history of Los Angeles during World War II. 

Oh the Moon (Harper Perennial) From actress, comedian, musician, and writer Charlyne Yi comes this collection of illustrated, interconnected short stories and anecdotes that blends comedy, fantastic adventures, and a storm of feelings that will make you want to laugh and cry at the same time reminiscent of the works of Demetri Martin, Shel Silverstein and John Cassavetes. Charlyne Yi takes readers from the beginning of time to the depths of a frog's stomach, and to Hell and back literally in this collection of short stories that showcases her unique style.Equal parts whimsical, hilarious, heartbreaking, and terrifying, these short stories both written and illustrated by Charlyne can be read separately, but are connected thematically following the difficulties of love at every age: Forgive Me: What happens when the tiniest boy of all time is the only thing standing between the world s largest baby and an angry mob? Who could ever love something so small? Or so big? The Particles: A love story that takes all the time in the universe to tell. She's All Legs: In this spicy, action-packed romance, Agatha, a woman who is literally just legs and a head, decides to hunt down and kill the Devil himself. Along the way she meets Cassady, an Elvis impersonator with his own, mysterious gripe with the Dark Lord. Charlyne Yi is a struggling poet, comedian, musician, painter, and writer.  She can do ten pushups a day.  She wrote and starred in the fictionalized documentary Paper Heart, for which she won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance.  She has also been in Knocked Up, This is 40, and House.

There Is No Right Way to Meditate (Adams Media Corporation) In There Is No Right Way to Meditate, award-winning artist Yumi Sakugawa helps you tap into your inner self and finally find the peace that you've been seeking. Each page offers a unique perspective on how to lead a more mindful life, with captivating ink illustrations and encouraging words like, "it's okay if the only thing you did today was breathe." From simple ways to get rid of a bad mood to instructions for making your intentions come true, her lessons will inspire you to become more aware of the present moment and find stillness no matter where you go. Yumi Sakugawa is an Ignatz Awards nominated comic book artist and the author of I Think I Am in Friend-Love With You and Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One With The Universe. Her comics have also appeared in The Believer, Bitch, the Best American Non­Required Reading 2014, The Rumpus, Folio, Fjords Review, and other publications. A graduate from the fine art program of University of California, Los Angeles, she lives in Los Angeles.

Rookie Yearbook Four (Razorbill) Rookie is an online magazine for teenage girls with monthly-themed content that includes life lessons, diary entries, DIY projects, playlists and interviews with cultural icons like Mindy Kaling, Shailene Woodley, Laverne Cox, Lena Dunham, Morrissey, FKA Twigs, and Sofia Coppola. NOTE: As with all Skylight Books in-store events, this reading is free and open to the public (first come, first served).  But because we're expecting a large crowd at this event, we'll be giving out numbered tickets to the signing line to keep things organized: To get a ticket to the signing line, you must purchase a copy of Rookie Yearbook Four here at Skylight Books. If you'd like to pre-order the book before its October 20th release date, you can do so on our website at any time (add the book to your cart, below) and we will reserve a signing line ticket for you. Starting October 20th, you can buy books (and get your signing line ticket) in person, by phone, or via our website. Web pre-orders can also be picked up starting the 20th. For all website orders for this event, be sure to leave a note in the Order Comments field if you'd like a signing line ticket. Can't attend? If you would like a signed book but will not be able to attend, click Signed Copy after adding the book to your cart and we'll do our best to get it signed for you. You  may pick up this book in the store after the event, or have it shipped to you. Skylight's Friends with Benefits members get priority signing line tickets (and 20% off this and all other event books each month), so be sure to mention your membership (or join) when you order the book Rookie Yearbook Four exclusives will include a teen bedroom diorama and motivational posters written by Willow Smith, an adolescence survival guide by Rashida Jones; conversations between Donna Tartt and Florence Welch, Solange and Ed Droste, and Tracee Ellis Ross with Jamia; illustrated peeks into the closet of Charli XCX and the artistic influences of Dev Hynes and Ezra Koenig; and Friend Crushes between folks like Shamir and Chloe Chaidez and Amandla Stenberg and Kiernan Shipka. More exclusives to come! Tavi Gevinson is the editor-in-chief and founder of Rookie, an online magazine for teenage girls. Tavi’s career in media began when she created the blog Style Rookie in 2008 at age 11. She was profiled by The New Yorker in 2010, and in 2011, at 15, launched Rookie. Six days after its debut, Rookie received more than one million pageviews. Tavi has since spoken at TEDxTeen, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sydney Opera House, the New Yorker Festival, the Commonwealth Club of California, the University of Wisconsin’s Distinguished Lecture Series, the Brooklyn Museum, the Melbourne Writers Festival, and the Economist's The World in 2011. Tavi is also an actress, having most recently starred in Kenneth Lonergan’s Tony-nominated This Is Our Youth on Broadway alongside Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin.

Talk (New York Review of Books) Friendships are built on chatter, on gossip, on revelations—on talk. Over the course of the summer of 1965, Linda Rosenkrantz taped conversations between three friends (two straight, one gay) on the cusp of thirty vacationing at the beach: Emily, an actor; Vince, a painter; and Marsha, a writer. The result was Talk, a novel in dialogue. The friends are ambitious, conflicted, jealous, petty, loving, funny, sex- and shrink-obsessed, and there’s nothing they won’t discuss. Topics covered include LSD, fathers, exes, lovers, abortions, S&M, sculpture, books, cats, and of course, each other. Suffusing the characters’ banter are the feelings of freedom, indolence, and ennui that accompany summer. But despite its summery stillness, Talk takes place at a turning point for Emily, Marsha, and Vince, who are nearing 30 and for American culture at large. The sixties are in full swing, social mores are being thrown aside, and the three friends are fully caught up in this spirit of change. Talk was ahead of its time in recognizing the fascination and significance of nonfamily ties in contemporary life. It may be almost fifty years since Emily, Vince, and Marsha spent the season in East Hampton, but they wouldn’t be out of place on the set of Girls or in the pages of a novel like Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? Praise for Talk "Cool, astringent...something new, something beyond black humor or pop fiction." --The New Republic "Utterly hip, utterly frank, utterly amoral." --New Haven Register "The rawest of raw material is hashed over in detail, but with such clinical openness and enthusiasm that one is far more often delighted and stimulated than embarrassed or shocked." --James Leo Herlihy, author of Midnight Cowboy  "The three [main characters] mercilessly dissect themselves and each other. Ostensibly everything goes in, with sudden realistic swerves of attention from the state of their souls and their sex-lives to the cooking--from egos to eggs, so to speak, which is very much the way life is...The pattern of self-revelation is far from coarse: it is eloquent and convincing, with its insights suddenly stumbled upon, its slender bridges of nervous sympathy that join each private island to the threatening outside world." --Norman Shrapnel, The Guardian  "The characters are defined by speech alone, and the talk is of a kind that has been missing from literature...Miss Rosenkrantz's importance as a writer is to have shown, right away in her first book, that exact data can go into a novel without the pressures of conventional plot and character requirements." --Vogue Linda Rosenkrantz is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including Telegram, a history of the telegraphic communication, and her memoir, My Life as a List: 207 Things About My (Bronx) Childhood, and the co-author of Gone Hollywood: The Movie Colony in the Golden Age. She was also the founding editor of Auction magazine, a long-time syndicated columnist, and a founder of the popular baby-naming site Nameberry.com. She currently resides in Los Angeles.