Ann S. Epstein Writer

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Jazzed by Jill Dearman (Rating 5) – Note Perfect. Awkward Wilhelmina (Will) is obsessed with social butterfly Dolly. Both girls are talented musicians, Will on clarinet, Dolly on piano. Dolly is turned on by jazz and crime; Will is turned on by jazz and Dolly. In a master-slave lesbian relationship, that occasionally turns the tables, Dolly blows hot and cold while Will boils with desire and freezes with the fear of desertion. To guarantee the erratic Dolly’s love, the compliant Will agrees to do anything, even murder a fourteen-year-old boy. Thus unfolds a gender-bending version of the scandalous 1924 Leopold and Loeb case. Dearman captures the Zeitgeist of the era — prohibition, antisemitism, social snobbery, homophobia, and the perceived threat of “Negro music.” The writing is itself a riff on jazz, at times syncopated and lively, at other times sustained and lugubrious. Like jazz artists, the protagonists trade solos, then meld their sounds. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire the fluidity with which Dearman shifts between styles as smoothly as a versatile musician. She takes us into the minds of her fully developed, complex characters, while also portraying their families’ social status, the legal system that traps them, and the medical establishment that purports to “treat” their sexual deviance. Jazzed is a note-perfect novel.

A gender-bending twist on an infamous crime story

Why writers read: “Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” – Malorie Blackman

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Day: A Novel by Michael Cunningham (Rating 5) – Ourselves, Only More So. Day: A Novel by Michael Cunningham tracks the lives of a family and its satellites — five adults and three children in all — on the same April date in three consecutive years: 2019, 2020, and 2021, before, during, and after the height of the pandemic. Compared to many people, they are not very inconvenienced. One is tempted to dismiss them as self-absorbed middle class New Yorkers, yet Cunningham persuades us that these well-intentioned lost souls are worth our compassion. The narrative is very interior; Cunningham probes the minds of each character, child as well as adult, and excavates their often incompatible desires. As a novelist myself who uses multiple points of view (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page, I admire Cunningham’s ability to make each voice unique. I was particularly struck by the author’s choice to make the children, rather than the adults, ruminate about death. For children, life itself merits investigation, so death is no different. Adults, aware that their time on earth is ebbing, dare not dwell on its demise. By the book’s end, the world has changed, each person’s situation has changed, yet their relationships to work, home, and one another remain an unchanging loop. Time moves on, day to day and year to year, yet we remain who we are, only more so.

Eight characters, three years, one pandemic

Why writers read: “Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.” – Jane Smiley

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo (Rating 3) – For Insiders Only. Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo is the story of four Dominican sisters and two of their daughters. Men are tangential and, with one or two exceptions, not worth the trouble they cause. The six women propel the narrative, from their public gifts to their private parts. They make inspired pronouncements and unabashedly pleasure themselves. One sister foresees death in her dreams, another’s inner radar detects dishonesty, a third makes healing concoctions, and the fourth, lacking magical powers, channels the world’s pulse through dancing. The plot is driven by the second oldest sister’s decision to have a living wake. While she’s in good health; she’s determined to celebrate her life with her loved ones before she dies. The book’s chronology charts each woman’s actions and feelings before, during, and after this event. Their relationships to one another and to their heritage form the book’s substance. This is rich territory, yet I never fully immersed myself in the landscape. I repeatedly had to remind myself who was who. While the women’s individual stories are engaging, Acevedo fails to weave the intricate web of their “family” connections. Nor does Acevedo convey the “lore” of Dominican culture. She uses Spanish words without enough context for non-speakers to understand their meaning. As writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I take pains to avoid distancing readers from my characters in this way. I came to Family Lore eager to be welcomed into an intriguing family and be introduced to an underrepresented culture. Instead I often felt excluded from a narrative that was “for insiders only.” If I were invited to the wake, I would have nothing to say.

Women drive the narrative in this Dominican family

Why writers read: “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.” – Emily Dickinson