Healing through story
SNL original member Laraine Newman teaches us about improv, about moving a scene along. We clothe our bare mannequin with purpose.
And I offer another character sketch, this one with a touch of humor. Enjoy.
Continue readingI’ve never been to the catacombs of Paris. Never come face to face with the roots of Irish humor. But on this Mannequin Monday books take me where I have never been. Elle Marr, Tana French…
Words don’t simply clothe a blank form. They transport the viewer.
And an excerpt from my next book Surfrider,
In several recent blog posts I’ve said that, when I open a book or begin watching a film, I expect the story to take me somewhere I’ve never been. Whether it’s an emotion, place, personality, mystery, spirit – I want to experience something new.
Stories I’ve enjoyed recently, for example, that fit that bill would include:
“Come to Paris. Your sister is dead.” The opening lines from Elle Marr’s debut novel The Missing Sister. This week we clothe our mannequin with words, stories set in Paris, We visit three novels, two historical, one contemporary, all set in the City of Light.
And can we talk of Paris without Edith Piaf joining us? I offer an imaginative story of my own about the Paris catacombs. Thanks for joining us this week.
Over the last few months I’ve read, by coincidence, a handful of novels set in Paris, written by women authors, featuring women protagonists. Two were historical fiction, one contemporary. And all gripping reads.
The first was Pam Jenoff’s The Lost Girls of Paris. Here’s the opening line: “If not for the second-worst mistake of Grace Healey’s life, she never would have found the suitcase.” The story moves back and forth between New York in 1946 (the opening line) and Paris in 1943. A woman administrator in the London office of war operations proposed using women operatives behind enemy lines.
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