The Bone Weaver | The Other Woman | For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance
The Bone Weaver
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Buy from AmazonFollowing the death of her lifelong friend, professor Mimi Zilber sets off on a journey to discover how she came to this lonely place in her life, and why she is running from the opportunity to love. The Bone Weaver is a blend of history and fiction created around three generations of women and their struggles to survive pogroms, illness and the violence of shtetl life in nineteenth-century eastern Europe. By taking apart the family tapestry thread by thread, and then studying these women and their daily lives of uncertainty, tragedy, and joy, Mimi learns important lessons about courage and the will to survive. And in her discovery of what makes these women remarkable, she also discovers herself. back to top>>
The Other Woman
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Buy from AmazonShe’s been called the harpy, the Jezebel, the Lorelei, the bitch…and other choice names. In truth, she is someone’s daughter, mother, friend, confidante. She seduces husbands, breaks up marriages, and occasionally becomes a stepmother. Sometimes, she is even a victim. So who is this creature who arrives like a wrecking ball to destroy lives and families? She is the Other Woman—but she’s only half the story.
For every Other Woman, there is a wife or girlfriend whose relationship has been devastated—or surprisingly—blissfully liberated. Some women find themselves playing both roles during the course of a lifetime.
With 21 insightful essays from the list of America’s most respected and award-winning female authors, this collection explores the highly personal, sometimes anguished, sometimes hilarious, but always compelling experiences of women on both sides of these highly charged and emotional situations.
Reviews
Publishers Weekly
The Other Woman may be a topic of eternally prurient interest, but the main attraction of this strong collection of 21 personal essays is the top-drawer writers such as Diana Abu-Jaber, Laurie Stone and Susan Cheever. Narrated from the point of view of the marriage wrecker or that of the wife who suffers the anguish of triangulation in a trusting relationship, these tales drip with the bitterness of experience. In "Palm Springs," Mary Jo Eustace records the shattering moment when she was stranded on vacation with her small children, and her husband revealed he had fallen in love with his movie co-star. Jane Smiley's terrifically funny "Iowa Was Never Like This" describes the incorrigible but enchanting litany of love's fickle nature. Dani Shapiro's "The Mistress" recreates her several years' affair with the much older stepfather of her college friend—and the lies she finally uncovered by hiring a detective. And in her plainspoken "The Uterine Blues," Connie May Fowler wonders when women are going to smarten up and stop sabotaging one another by sleeping with each other's husbands. The anthology features tales from women of all ages, lesbians and women who have been abused physically: it is a candid and truly fascinating look at how men and women love and hurt.O (Oprah) Mag., June issue
"Invite the bitch to dinner" is one wickedly brash survival strategy in The Other Woman: (subhead), edited by (etc.). Among the star turns in this unusually frank and furious collection of essays are Pam Houston's "Not Istanbul," a hypothetical journey into an impossibly complicated relations ("Here's the thing about the other woman. She lives inside your head") and Connie May Fowler's "The Uterine Blues," a savory bit of rancor from a woman scorned.The same delicious guilty pleasure a person experiences when a girlfriend confides a story from her life (only after extracting the promise: never tell) is what a reader has in store, opening Victoria Zackheim’s addictively readable collection of true life stories about The Other Woman. I picked it up thinking I’d read one or two, and two hours later, I was still turning pages. Poignant, chilling, occasionally heartbreaking, and all true. Joyce Maynard, author of The Usual Rules and Internal Combustion
With a generous hand and an artful eye, Victoria Zackheim beckons forth the Other Woman and invites her to unveil herself in this moving and exhilarating assortment of essays. Friend, co-worker, neighbor, even self, the Other Woman is almost always a surprise, but the biggest surprise of all is that this volume offers so many unexpected glimpses of her. Abby Frucht, author of Polly's Ghost
The essays in The Other Woman are a fascinating, moving and sometimes frightening window into a subject of which fascinates, moves and frightens us—infidelity. I read this book in a single sitting—I couldn't put it down. Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
Ask twenty-one wonderful women writers to let loose on The Other Woman and you wind up with a collection that reads more like a page-turning novel than a book of essays. When you catch your breath and remember these stories are all true, you're touched by the willingness of these authors to let you in on their secrets. Sometimes painful, other times funny, always wise—this is a wonderful book. M. J. Rose, international best-selling author of The Delilah Complex
Coming Soon!
For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance
Why is it that with everything women have accomplished, we still struggle with our feelings about our bodies? Perhaps it’s because, in our society, body image has become a loaded term. Whether we’re young girls or elderly women, we are bombarded by the media’s idea of perfection: lithe young models with perfect skin and smooth bodies too often achieved through eating disorders and fad diets. And no matter what product the manufacturer is trying to sell, the substance of that message remains the same: women are imperfect and, unless we succumb to the hype, that imperfection will thwart our chances for happiness.
In For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance twenty-seven gifted authors write personal essays about how body image has colored, changed or enriched their lives...or how life’s events have changed their body image.
Many of the authors in this anthology have experienced that one transformative moment when they thought Aha! and life was never the same. Whether the focus is health, childbirth, youthful energy or growing older, the writing is profound, sometimes hilarious, and always engaging. What better than humor and the naked truth to celebrate and flaunt our bodies…and our attitudes toward them! As you read each woman’s essay, you will see that whoever we are, the way we feel about our bodies profoundly affects the way we live our lives.
