Author | Miriam Karmel |
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Genre | novel |
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Publication date |
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ISBN | 978-1-57131-105-4 |
Being Esther (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013) is the first novel by Miriam Karmel. It explores the life of an 85-year-old widow, Esther Lustig, who is fully experiencing her days during which she may move from her home. She is currently living alone in a Chicago apartment building, and feels comfortable there, but her over-involved adult daughter wants her to move to an assisted-living facility or "Bingoville". [1]
This novel explores aging and related aspects and maintaining friendships, maintaining boundaries, and maintaining one's choices over one's life. [2]
"Esther has the urge to tell them that growing old is one of the most surprising things that has happened to her," wrote the Twin Cities Daily Planet , calling the novel "a bittersweet joy". [3]
The Star Tribune called Being Esther an accomplished debut that provides illumination into that part of life that is refreshing and positive. [4] Miriam Bradman Abrahams celebrated this clear-eyed vision of Esther's life as "a tale worth telling and reading". [5] Hazel and Wren noted appreciatively Being Esther's authentic voice and its message to "be kinder and more attentive" to those who "have more to share than we think". [6]
Barbara Mary Crampton Pym was an English novelist. In the 1950s she published a series of social comedies, of which the best known are Excellent Women (1952) and A Glass of Blessings (1958). In 1977 her career was revived when the critic Lord David Cecil and the poet Philip Larkin both nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century. Her novel Quartet in Autumn (1977) was nominated for the Booker Prize that year, and she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is supposedly semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef because the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's experiences with what may have been clinical depression or bipolar II disorder. Plath died by suicide a month after its first United Kingdom publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of both Plath's ex-husband Ted Hughes and her mother. The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.
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Miriam Karmel is an American writer. Her first novel, Being Esther (2013), is one of only a few involving characters in their eighties.