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The Outlook for Earthlings traces an unusual, difficult friendship across a lifetime, between women of stunningly opposite natures. Melanie Taper is timid, compelled to obey and venerate authority. Yet in unguarded moments she demonstrates such deadly insight into human foibles as to suggest a strength that has, for dark reasons, deliberately hidden itself lifelong. Scarlet Rand, by contrast, is rash, willful, and impatient of reverence of any stripe. Scarlet is shocked by Mel's passive reserve; despite her obvious gifts, Mel is--bafflingly--self-erasing. Mel's Billy Budd-like saintliness maddens Scarlet--because finally and most troublingly, Scarlet disbelieves it. Their friendship suggests...
Part memoir, part handbook, part survey of the contemporary literary scene, Joan Frank’s Because You Have To: A Writing Life is a collection of essays that, taken together, provide a walking tour of the writing life. Frank’s aim is to form a coherent vision, one that may provide some communion about realities of the writer's vocation that have struck her as rarely revealed. Frank offers what she has learned as a writer not only to other writers, but to those to whom good writing matters. Her insights about "thinking on paper" are never dogmatic or pontifical; rather, they are cordial and intellectually welcoming. Original, witty, and practical, Frank ably steers us through the journey of her own life as a writer, as well as through the careers and work of other writers. Her subjects range widely, from the “boot camp” conditioning of marketing work to squaring off with rejection and envy; from sustaining belief in art’s necessity to the baffling subjectivity of literary perception and the magical books that nourish writers. Frank’s personal journey is wonderfully told, so that what in these essays is particular becomes useful and universal.
It is 1954 and thirteen-year-old Frank Gold, refugee from wartime Hungary, is learning to walk again after contracting polio in Australia. At the Golden Age Children's Polio Convalescent Home in Perth, he sees Elsa, a fellow patient, and they form a forbidden, passionate bond. The Golden Age becomes the little world that reflects the larger one, where everything occurs- love and desire, music, death, and poetry. It is a place where children must learn they're alone, even within their families. Subtle, moving and remarkably lovely, The Golden Age evokes a time past and a yearning for deep connection, from one of Australia's finest and most-loved novelists.
Set in Paris, California, Italy, and Spain, Joan Frank's second story collection explores the uncertainties and triumphs of women and men in and out of love and marriage, at varying ages and stages of contemporary American life. By turns wry, pained, and amused, In Envy Country investigates those small, complex truths that gain clarity with time and distance. "Joan Frank shows us ourselves. . . . Meticulously observed, with sentences that will make you stop and go back for another look." --Ehud Havazelet, author of Bearing the Body and Like Never Before "These stories each have a wonderful, intimate feel. . . . Written with authority and intelligence, they are layered and subtle . . . seriou...
EXCERPT Because of course she feels what he feels. . . . People their age natter along not copping to it but the awareness is billboarded all over their faces—a wavering, a hesitation, even those who used to crow and jab the air. The tablecloth of certainty, with all its sparkly settings, has been yanked, and not artfully. It's why people drink. All The News I Need probes the modern American response to inevitable, ancient riddles—of love and sex and mortality. Frances Ferguson is a lonely, sharp-tongued widow who lives in the wine country. Oliver Gaffney is a painfully shy gay man who guards a secret and lives out equally lonely days in San Francisco. Friends by default, Fran and Ollie nurse the deep anomie of loss and the creeping, animal betrayal of aging. Each loves routine but is anxious that life might be passing by. To crack open this stalemate, Fran insists the two travel together to Paris. The aftermath of their funny, bittersweet journey suggests those small changes, within our reach, that may help us save ourselves—somewhere toward the end.
'I remember standing on top of our local glen with a block of wood, expecting thousands of Germans coming down from the sky. What was I going to do with the block of wood? I never knew.' Leonard Jackson On 22 June 1940 France surrendered to Germany and the invasion of Britain seemed a very real possibility. The Home Guard was formed to defend our villages and towns. Members came from reserved occupations, those who had failed their medicals, the elderly and the young, with miners and farmers training alongside former majors. Their weapons and ammunition were negligible at first, but slowly these amateur soldiers began to produce professional results. In this unique book of reminiscenses about life on the home front, we see these men as they practise with pitchforks and fall into ditches after a pint or two of ale on the job. But we also see them learning how to fire grenades after a day studying engineering and undertaking night watches after exhausting factory shifts - knowing they could be the last stop between the enemy and their families and homes.
In her quartet of novellas, Joan Frank invites readers into the inner lives of characters bewildered by love, grief, and inexplicable affinities.
For more than 150 years, empowering practices have been used by social workers in their work with families, but the techniques of today differ significantly from those of the pioneers or even from those of a few years ago. Today's practitioners recognize that empowering others is impossible; social workers can, however, assist others as they empower themselves. This book integrates time-honored approaches with today's more modest goals, mindful of what empowerment can and cannot do. Synthesizing several theoretical supports—the strengths perspective, system theory, theories of family well-being, and theories of coping—the author responds to the question "What works?" with today's families in need. Practice illustrations are provided throughout to bring concepts to life and, more important, to present families describing their own experiences with achieving empowerment.