Category: Books

To the women who write with skin unzipped

How could I, someone who loves to read, loves poetry, reach the age of seventy-seven and know so little about the life of Sylvia Plath? I knew “The Story”. That she struggled with suicide, moved to the UK and married Ted Hughes. She suceeded in killing herself when she was thirty. The underlying, always hinted at, current was that she was crazy and brilliant. 

When I picked up the Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark, I’m fairly certain I hadn’t read a single one of her poems. Would I have picked it up (I listened to the audio) if I’d known it was just over 1100 pages? I’ll never know. A friend, a poet, had mentioned her love and admiration for Plath’s poetry in mid-June. I was about to leave on my self-imposed Writing Residency in Saint Jean de Luz (southwest France) and looking for something to accompany me on my train ride, I found Red Comet on Libby and started listening. In reviews that I read while I was listening to the book, it was unanimous that Ms. Clark was presenting the most objective, thorough, story of Plath’s life. Not the dramatic circumstances of her death. In the years since her death, “she has become a protean figure, an emblem of different things to different people, depending upon their viewpoint — a visionary, a victim, a martyr, a feminist icon, a schizophrenic, a virago, a prisoner of gender — or, perhaps, a genius, as both Plath and Hughes maintained during her lifetime.” —Daphne Merkin, New York Times.

Her life, her love of her father, the relationship with her mother who possibly projected all her desires and ambitions onto Plath, her teen years, her internship at Seventeen, and college years at Smith were a revelation to me. 

I loved every minute of listening to this audiobook. I found reasons to take long walks just so I could listen to more. The Sylvia Plath of this book was a determined, focused student then young woman who excelled at almost everything she did. She suffered depressive episodes as I did, as so many teens do, yet she remained true to her north star. I was stunned at her singlemindedness of purpose, write and get published. I paused at one point and listened to The Bell Jar.  If you ask me why I had never read that book, I couldn’t tell you. But I had avoided it. I found the writing to be lovely, simple, easy to enter into the story and root for the protagonist, Esther. I wanted to know how much was based on her real life. Red Comet told me.

Sitting at my computer in 2025, having lived through the Feminist revolution, the #metoo uprising, all the years where, because of leaders like Gloria Steinham and Betty Friedan, women have come a long way since the 1950s when Plath was writing and advocating for herself, it’s stunning to me how she was able to stand up for herself in the only way she knew how. Her sense of competition was so strong, it drove her forward, but also may have led to her death. She had few female inspirations to look up to. 

I hadn’t planned to make it a summer of reading feminist powerhouses. For various reasons: wanting to read more essays written by women in order to emulate them; meeting Melissa Febos at the American Library in Paris and getting some positive and encouraging feedback from her, I also read Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (I read Splintering last summer) and Febos’ Girlhood and Abandon Me.  Like Plath, both these women take huge risks in their writing, exposing their vulnerabilities, writing from a deeply personal place. Jamison writes about tremendous pain. Febos writes about sex and loving women and her awful childhood of being teased and ridiculed because of her large breasts. Girlhood“dissembles many of the myths women are told throughout their lives: that we ourselves are not masters of our own domains, that we exist for the pleasure of others, and so our own pleasure is secondary and negligible.”—Melissa Hart, OprahDaily.com. Jamison writes about her alcoholism, her lousy choice of lovers and in Splintering, the demise of her marriage.

All three women became professors. Plath at her alma mater, Smith College; Febos currently works as a Full Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program; and Jamison at the Columbia University MFA program, where she directs the nonfiction concentration. In other words, all three women, writing as they do, leave themselves very exposed, unzipped in the world. 

As a writer myself, I love knowing these women in depth. Febos and Jamison are alive, young, and headed towards higher accolades than they have already earned. I admire their style of writing. I am in awe of their willingess to expose such vulnerabilities. Jamison is in a twelve step program which encourages self-examination and, therefore, deep shovelling below the surface to face and admit why we do what we do and the consequences. Febos’s work asks us to question every single ‘myth’ we were raised with, every story we were told about who we are and should be, who holds the power in our world and do we, inadvertently, support that world while secretly wanting to have our own personal power. 

In the August 4th issue of the New Yorker, Jamison writes about the Pain of Perfectionism. I was struck by so much information, the kind where you smack yourself on the forehead and say “yes, that’s exactly it!”, that I was scrambling to locate on old therapist of mine from California to talk about my personal revelations. 

“To Flett and Hewitt (two psychologists she interviewed at length for the New Yorker article), the idea of perfectionism as a form of admirable striving is a dangerous misconception, one they have devoted three books and hundreds of peer-reviewed papers to overturning. “I can’t stand it when people talk about perfectionism as something positive,” Flett told me, as we sat at his kitchen table in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb where he has spent most of his life. “They don’t realize the deep human toll.” Hewitt, a clinical psychologist, has seen with his therapy patients how perfectionism can be “personally terrorizing for people, a debilitating state.” It’s driven not by aspiration but by fear, and by the conviction that perfection is the only “way of being secure and safe in the world.”—Leslie Jamison, The New Yorker August 4, 2025

Read the article.

This summer was an interesting digression for me, someone who loves to escape into mysteries and thrillers. I was revising three chapters of my forthcoming book to submit to a Writing Retreat. I was deep in an attempt to express myself without self-pity, with honesty, with self-reflection, and a desire to show my growth from one period of my life to another. I found inspiration from all three (four if you count Heather Clark, a remarkable writer and researcher) women. They guided me in going deeper, get to the real truth, the truth under what I thought was the truth, the truth that makes me squirm.

To all four of you, I say Thank You.

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A bientôt,

Sara

My Good Bright Wolf

by Sarah Moss

Sarah Moss writes novels. I haven’t read any of them but have read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for which she wrote the Introduction. I don’t think that really counts. So I’m not sure why I picked up her memoir My Good Bright Wolf, which came out yesterday, knowing nothing about her. Except I loved the title. 

There are people who say there are no coincidences. Sarah Moss is anorexic. She has written a memoir that brings the illness of anorexia so intimately to the reader that I felt myself catch my breath several times. When I wrote my book Saving Sara A Memoir of Food Addiction, I wanted to do what I had never read in all the literature of eating disorders. Bring the reader into the mind, insanity, and horror of binging. Until I read My Good Bright Wolf, I never comprehended anorexia. I thought it a completely different animal than binging or bulimia. After reading this memoir, I don’t feel very different from Sarah with an ‘h’. 

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At the end of the memoir, Ms. Moss tells us how hard the book was to write, not just because it is so intimate but because she comes from a good background, had a great education, has a successful profession, and owns real estate. Which, to my mind, only confirms that eating disorders have no bias. Rich, poor, black, white, American, European, these diseases don’t discriminate.

This memoir is beautifully written, courageously written. She is able to convey the dialogue that goes on in our minds when “under the influence.” The part of her that convinces herself that she isn’t really sick, and even as she is inches away from death, she tried to convince a doctor that there are really sick people in the hospital and he should be attending to them.

She writes about the cult, the politics of being Thin. I related to everything she said: the judgments that thin people were better people. I hated my body because I was fat. She hated her body because she wasn’t thin enough. Her last chapter is entitled “My body, my home.” Just those four words gave me a severe jolt. I’ve always been looking for home. What if home is the shelter we carry with us all the time. Like a turtle, we can go to safety by pulling into our homes.

I listened to My Good Bright Wolf. It was narrated by Morven Christie. “”Morven Christie’s limpid, Scottish-inflected voice and gentle, enticing tone combine to lure listeners into Sarah Moss’s astonishing (memoir) as effectively as mermaids tempt sailors into the sea” —AudioFile on Summerwater (Earphones Award winner). Morven’s voice is strong and she enunciates with beauty. It is as if she had written the book, she knew just when to inflect, when to emphasize, when to talk to herself (as Moss) with contempt. 

There is an emerging breed of memoir writer: Sarah Moss, Maggie Smith, Leslie Jameson who write poetically, lyrically. Who bring us into their worlds in a soft rocking manner but the subject matter is so serious, the self-talk so vicious and this style makes everything much easier to bare and also to relate to.

I’m not great at book reviews. And wish I could do this memoir justice. If you are at all interested in disordered eating, at the insanity behind the disease, and how one anorexic describes it and dealt/deals with it, I urge you to read this book. 

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A bientôt,

Sara

So many books……so little time.

You may have noticed that many Substacks this month have focused on books. The release of the 100 Best Books of the century (yikes, did they have to use that word?) by the NY Times has many people talking about what was included and what wasn’t. As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.—from NYTimes website.

I have read a number of posts in which the author groused about a book missing from the list. And how could George Saunders be on it not twice but three times!!! The most amusing thing I saw was the book that was No. 1: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante; translated by Ann Goldstein 2012. I chose this book for my bookclub two years ago when I wanted to read it a second time. Not one person in the book club liked it—except me! No 9 is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 2005. I picked this book for my book club three years ago and the same thing happened. I was the only reader to enjoy it! 

The New York Times is not the end all be all as we have certainly seen with their political stance lately. It is a revered publication (though if it doesn’t watch out, it will suffer a very painful falling out amongst intelligent people). Many, many people disagree with this book list. Reading all the lists that have been inspired by the Times, has caused me to think about the books I’ve read this summer. I thought I’d tell you about some and why I liked, or didn’t like them. So here we go in no particular order.

1  Tianammen Square—Lai Wen Thirty years after Lai Wen survived the Tianammen Square uprising and massacre, she has written a lovely book about her childhood and teen years leading up to the revolt. It is called a novel. It is a snapshot of life in China under two different regimes, neither particularly encouraging to an intelligent young girl wanting to succeed in life. We are privy to her relationships with both mother and father and a boy that she was sometimes girlfriend/boyfriend with but was constantly questioning. 

2  Tell Me Everything—Elizabeth Strout The world of Elizabeth Strout is a world that reminds me of Our Town or It’s a Wonderful Life, small towns where everyone knows everyone and, in each of her books, we learn about a different resident. This book is about Bob Burgess. She tells us that on the first page. Lucy Barton meets Olive Kitteridge in this book. It’s a bit like going back and revisiting old friends who have grown and changed since last seeing them but their essential natures never change. The plot isn’t as important as how people relate to each other. Strout writes in simple language, short sentences and, if you are open to it, wallops you in the end with some truths that are good to hold onto in our own lives. 

3  A Woman of No Importance: : The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II (2019)—Sonia Purcell My sister told me to read this book. She loved it. I loved it. Reading any story of the resistance in France is stirring. The courage, the belief in what was right is impressive and most of us don’t have that kind of physical or moral courage. This story is particularly fascinating because the woman in question, Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite, became one of the most targeted spies by the Gestapo. She lost part of a leg in an accident early in her life and managed to walk the Pyrenees, out manoeuvre Nazis, and lead an ever changing team of resistance fighters. Thirty or forty years later, no one knew her name.

4  The Marlow Murder Club—Robert Thorogood There are three books in this series. I stumbled on the second one in a little free library box near my apartment building. I recognised Thorogood’s name because he writes the series Death in Paradise and it’s off-shoot Beyond Paradise—both of which I enjoy. These are just plain fun books. Like the Thursday Murder Club, the “detectives” are older and have to find a way to work with real detectives and not ruffle their feathers. I’ve now read all three books in the series and what entertainment! I believe the BBC has serialized the first book with Samantha Bond in the starring role.

5  The Women—Kristen Hannah Kristen Hannah has written two dozen books. She spoke recently at the Sun Valley Writers Conference and her event was live-streamed. She said that for the last fifteen years, she’s been writing about women whose voices get lost or forgotten.  The Women, published this year, is about the nurses who went to Vietnam, worked hard, and returned to the US to be told, when seeking help for PTSD, that 1) there were no women in Vietnam or 2) she couldn’t possibly be suffering as she didn’t see combat. It is a beautifully written description of both Vietnam and the emotional and mental falling apart that followed.

6  The Bird Artist—Howard Norman I had never heard of Howard Norman until this year when my writing teacher, Jennifer Lauck, assigned us I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place, a small book of five essays, to read for class. I fell in love with him. Jennifer suggested The Bird Artist, published in 1994, the first book of his Canadian trilogy. Written in spare sentences, the book concerns Fabian who wants to be a bird painter. Set in Newfoundland (where my aunt came from adding to my love of this book), we follow Fabian through relationships with his parents and various women. It has a haunting quality because of the writing style. Though we are distanced from the narrator, by the end of the book, it is hard to forget the story, the landscape, and the characters that make up this wonderful tale.

7  The Self is the Only Person—Elisa Gabbert Like Howard Norman, I had never heard of Elisa Gabbert until recently. If I wasn’t writing my own book of essays, I don’t think other essayists would jump out at me when I’m reading book reviews. The review I read of this book, loved it and who wouldn’t with a title like that? Elisa Gabbert loves books, she loves libraries, and she loves to discuss books. These well-researched essays talk about books. How her husband and she, along with friends, started the Stupid Classics Book Group. They picked classics to read that were under 450 pages. Gabbert tells us what she thinks of Fahrenheit 451 and a couple of other picks. She doesn’t like any of the choices until she gets to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. She talks about the part of the Library she likes the best. Macmillan Publishers says “Contagiously curious essays on reading, art and the life of the mind.” Yes!

8  Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story—Leslie Jamison  Splinters is Jamison’s most recent book, about the dissolution of her marriage and raising her daughter on her own. She is a recovering alcoholic and, though not drinking, she finds herself in addictive relationships constantly self-examining her motives, her choices, and her priorities. I have read some of Jamison’s earlier essays. This book is the most vulnerable she has made herself. She doesn’t gloss over her behaviours nor rush through to what she learns as a result. At one point I thought to myself ‘this is brilliant writing but I don’t think I’d like her as a friend’.’ She probably felt the same way. By the end of the book, she is learning about self-love, experiencing grief and joy at the same time, and her descriptions of the love she feels for her daughter will leave you breathless.

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Happy Reading,

A bientôt,

Sara

Snow and…..

Ann Arbor

Friday night, January 12, just as the sun was beginning to descend behind the trees, big fat snowflakes began to fall in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The kind that stick to the ground. Within an hour, I walked to the front door of my sister’s home and peeked out. Then I stepped out onto the porch. In front of me was a white winter wonderland. The snowfall was at least 6 inches and still going. The snow was light, light enough that it comfortably sat on tree limbs without forcing the branch to bow to the ground. Neighbors hadn’t taken down their Christmas lights. Across the street was a tree decorated in only blue lights. Without snow, in the dark, it looked dramatic. With the snow, it looked like a thousand dollar window in Macy’s or Magnins. Windows that were so magical adults as well as children were enchanted.

My sister’s next-door neighbor had started to take his outdoor lights down but couldn’t finish because of the snow and cold. The tree was sprinkled with red, yellow, green, and white tiny lights. They lighted up the lower branches of his snow filled tree. Cars parked on the side of the road had almost disappeared. No one was out. The snowfall was pristine. Even knowing that the morning would probably bring ice, cars that wouldn’t start, dirty brown tracks on the streets as people attempted to go to work or do errands, the sight of the snow Friday evening filled me with wonder. It was moments of pure joy.

I cannot remember last seeing snow like that. Living in California, we might get a sprinkle on Mt. Diablo that was gone by mid-day. On ski trips, it was rare to be lucky enough to get fresh snow for the next morning. In the ten years I’ve lived in Paris, I’ve seen snow fall five or six times. Usually flurries. Everyone gets excited but the snow doesn’t stick. The one time it did stick, the snow removers were out in record time making sure all the parked cars on every street could move.

When I was young, in college, Paris often got a foot or more of snow. Foot traffic tapped down paths on the sidewalks so people could stroll. Les marchands de marrons(roasted chestnut sellers) brought their stoves, huge iron apparatuses, and several bushels of chestnuts. They’d set themselves up at the foot of a bridge, then barbecue the chestnuts till they became soft. I’d buy a newspaper cone full of the piping hot chestnuts for two francs. Buying and eating those chestnuts became the definition of winter in Paris for me. I think I’ve seen three chestnut sellers in the last five years.

It seems I’ve only been to Ann Arbor in the winter. People say I have to come in the summer when trees are in bloom and flowers of every color are flowing off porches. The weather is warm often verging on very hot. But for my money, the experience of witnessing an untouched field of snow that goes as far as the eye can see is a wonder to behold. Of course, I don’t have to live there and suffer all the problems that are sure to happen for the next week or two.

Ann Arbor is a great town. Most important to me, if I lived there, is the fact that there isn’t a rush hour. My sister asked me to go to Plum Market for a few things for our dinner. Since it was 5:15pm, I assumed I’d have to take side roads. “No, no,” she said. I drove down Miller, turned left on to Maple, a major thoroughfare, and soon I was at Plum Market. Same amount of time as if I’d driven at 1pm. Same amount of cars. Heaven!!

It’s a walking town. The Huron River runs very close to the town and provides walkers with many lovely tow paths. The University of Michigan is right smack dab in the middle of town. I’d even go so far as to venture that the town of Ann Arbor grew up around the University. Wonderful stores line State St, Huron St and Hill St. After Michigan won the National Football Championship last Monday, the M den was packed with people buying T-shirts declaring Michigan the best at 15-0 ( I just had to get that in. It was very exciting and I love the excitement of Championship games!)

Ann Arbor is a bookstore town. There are a minimum of eight bookstores that sell both used and new books. There is even a map showing where all the bookstores are. One can make a walking tour out of a search for all the bookstores. The love of books and bookstores is very Parisian! My sister took me to Literati which sells new books. The ground floor is floor to ceiling fiction. It looks like an old timey academic library, There are even ladders. Below, on the lower floor, was non-fiction and the first floor (second in US) was the best book floor I’ve seen in a long time. Children’s books, jigsaw puzzles, beautifully crafted dolls, cards and stickers, and a collection of old typewriters on display. All this was managed by Vicky who knows every book in the store and is so personable that I found myself buying books and cards even though I almost always get my books from the Library.

I’m writing this sitting on a plane two hours out of Detroit. Thanks to all the snow that, indeed, became ice, the plane left two hour late. I’m flying west so maybe I’ll still see some daylight when we land. Meanwhile, it’s lovely to revisit Ann Arbor.

A bientôt,

Sara

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May is Mental Health month in the US

During this past week, I read two pieces of writing, a substack essay by Mary Gaitskill and a novel by Abraham Verghese.Both hit the same place in my gut for very different reasons. I finished the novel a day before I read the substack so I had time to meditate on one of the messages the book held for me. Verghese’s novel, The Covenant of Water (due May 2), spans seventy-five years, revolving around a family living in what is now Kerala, in southwestern India. The family is not poor but not wealthy by any means. Most of it takes place while India was under the rule of the British Empire. Without going into too much of the story, the family suffers a lot of death, many of the characters suffer misfortune, and there is an air of sorrow throughout the book. As I was reaching the end of the book, I was struck by the sense of “Shit Happens” and “We Move On”. How best to describe that? In my life, a child of 1950s optimism and Father Knows Best TV, I believed that if bad things were happening to me, there was something wrong with me. I almost always saw the glass half empty and found ways to escape my reality as I was hurting all the time. In Verghese’s book, ‘reality’ was that ‘bad’ things happen – to everyone. It’s normal. Those that moved forward accepted life on life’s terms. Those that didn’t, go through some very tough times. No one had to like the hand they were dealt. They mourned but they didn’t end up in therapy wondering what was wrong with ‘them’. They weren’t the center of the universe. Love wasn’t bartered on how good a person was or was not. Hardship befalling one was not a moral issue. The matriarch of this family loved everyone in her family and everyone who became part of the family. They knew they were loved. Yet shit still happened. Many of the characters found purpose in their suffering and found a way to turn their sorrow and grief into something that was of use to the larger world. This is a very simplistic summary and I recommend reading the book.

Gaitskill’s essay, entitled The Despair of the Young…. and the madness of academia, (search on the substack search engine) is a heartbreaking look, from a creative writing teacher’s experience, at the nihilism that so many between the ages of ten and thirty suffer from today. In her writing classes, students wrote about suicide, murder, serial killing, rape, and violence of the most extreme sorts. Often from the first-person point of view. She has taught long enough to see the trend get worse over the years. Political correctness, lawsuits, and lack of “safety” have seemingly tied Academia’s hands to handle this trend in a way that might actually be helpful to a student. I am in my 70s. I felt despair in my teens and early twenties. Nothing I felt compares to what I was reading in her essay. Though I often contemplated suicide, I never would have followed through. It was a way out that I always had in the back of my mind that kept me from believing I was in a prison of misery with no exit doors. And there was a revolving circle of adults (not my immediate family) who listened to me, empathized, and allowed me to be seen no matter how self-centered my despair was. 

I have little first-hand knowledge of what Gaitskill was writing about. The closest I’ve come is my reading the news of mentally unstable young people being allowed to buy guns, and taking their despair out on schoolmates and whoever was near them. I would never doubt Gaitskill. She is a brilliant writer, able to translate much of her life experience into very readable, though not always pleasant, short stories. I’ve also watched many of my friends go into therapy since White Supremacy and Hatred have crawled out from under the carpet in the years leading up to Trump’s election and the seven years since. Most of my friends are adults and know ways of trying to cope. Some have fallen sick. None that I know of have resorted to self-violence or other violence. I, myself, have chosen to distance myself from the insanity of what’s going on in the US by living much of the year in France. 

Where am I going with this writing? The contrast between the fictional story of a family that managed to convey that things do pass and there was no belief that whatever was happening was so acute that the only way to stop the pain was suicide or homocide, and in the USA of today, where violence is a reasonable option to deal with despair. It is an option supported by the very same people that say killing a fetus is a crime. 

Gaitskill further says that her students are being let down by their schools. She gave some examples of times when she, the professor, or another staff member could be available to talk to a student. She was told not to. “The only thing I can say for sure is that the young deserve better.  It has become standard to complain about how inept and spoiled the young are but—my students were in some ways pretty great.  Their stories confronted not only suicide and violence but also dilemmas of artificial intelligence, gender animus, caring for a sick parent and sibling during the pandemic, the tenderness of asexual love, the awfulness of age, the timelessness of war—they were ambitious, humorous and bright in the face of everything.”

When I finished reading The Covenant of Water, I didn’t want it to end. I felt so satisfied and full from having read about generations of people coping with life. When I finished Gaitskill’s substack, I felt so powerless over this despair that is spreading amongst young people like the black plague. Covid didn’t help but it’s not an excuse for why adults are letting young people down, why treating the mental health of our young isn’t available everywhere. It’s needed now more than ever.

According to the Suicide and Crisis Center of North Texas, suicide is the third leading cause of death of young people between the ages of 15 and 24.

  • 5,000 young people complete suicide in the U.S. each year.
  • Each year, there are approximately 10 youth suicides for every 100,000 youth.
  • Each day, there are approximately 12 youth suicides.
  • Every 2 hours and 11 minutes, a person under the age of 25 completes suicide.
  • In the past 60 years, the suicide rate has quadrupled for males 15 to 24 years old, and has doubled for females of the same age.
  • For every completed suicide by youth, it is estimated that 100 to 200 attempts are made.
  • Firearms remain the most commonly used suicide method among youth, accounting for 49% of all completed suicides.

There’s not much more to say except to hope that mental health counseling in schools, universities, and everywhere gets better and becomes more accessible. What is happening today should be unacceptable.

A bientôt

Sara

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Hooked on Food

Michael Moss, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote Salt, Sugar, Fat and his latest book, Hooked, was the speaker at the American Library in Paris author event. I wrote a review of the book Hooked: How we became addicted to Processed Food a year and a half ago and encouraged all my readers interested in both Addictions and Food, to read it. I learned he was coming to Paris to be a guest speaker at a writing retreat this week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible for me to attend the retreat. When I learned last weekend, that he would be speaking at the Library, I was very excited. This man had thanked me on Instagram for the review and I got an image of an author that was totally approachable.

Not only did I want to hear him in person, I decided I would give him a copy of my book Saving Sara, A Memoir of Food Addiction. I could tell from his writing that he did not have addiction issues himself, at least as far as food is concerned, that his aim was to expose Nestlé, for the pimps they are (my words not his), to alert the world that these companies WANT you to get addicted to their products as it is excellent for the financial bottom line. I’ve long wanted to correspond with him but hadn’t found a way. When I met him walking in the door of the Library, after we all greeted him, I asked him if he would be willing to read my book. He said he would be honored. So I inscribed it and handed it to him.

He was interviewed by the Library’s excellent Alice McCrumb who provided an air of excitement about the book. He told us about the research presently going: on taking ‘Photos’ of people’s brains right after eating chocolate, for instance, and how the researcher can see the corresponding parts of the brain light up within seconds. Most damningly, it seems industries don’t try to hide the fact that they are working hard to find products that are convenient, cheap, and addictive. The CEOs of these industries would never eat their own food, Moss told us.

I found myself very uncomfortable during the whole talk. Looking back I realize that I had come with the intention of making his acquaintance, giving him my book to read if he was willing, and maybe forming some kind of bond with him. That didn’t happen. I appreciate the science and the research that is now going into the huge subject of food addiction. He told us that in his first book, he danced around using the ‘A’ word, In Hooked, he didn’t. He even went so far as to say that for some people this addiction is like drug addiction and that people have to look at what drug addicts do to overcome their addictions for help with food. What I finally came up with by the time I got home was that I’m so used to being with like-minded people when talking of this subject, that I’m not often in the position of learning the more scientific aspects of it. In Michael’s talk, he was talking about Big Pharma (known as the food industry), not the addicts themselves. People had come to hear the dasterdly deeds of Nestlé (which makes $63.8bn a year) and the nine other huge food companies that control the majority of what you buy from the food and beverage brands, not to hear from people like me. I was definitely the odd man out.

Near the end, one woman asked “What is the solution?’ Two days later, I’m not actually sure if she was asking about the solution to stopping production of these addictive products or the solution to helping people stay away from them. I heard it as the second. I raised my hand and outed myself as a food addict in recovery for over 17 years, and that each of us has to take some responsibility for ending the abuse on our bodies. The topic before had been that so many families couldn’t afford good food, they had to buy this cheap excuse for food in order to feed their families. I didn’t respond to that but I know plenty of food addicts who live hand to mouth who have found a way to feed their families with real food. In 12 step rooms, we’re told you have to want it bad enough. 

The thing is: I agree with every one of his findings, and I applaud him for calling this problem what it is: Food Addiction. But I don’t agree that the industry has to take 100% responsibility for our health. If I had waited until that happened, I’d probably be dead by my own hand today. I think each one of us has to take 100% responsibility for what we put in our bodies and, people like me who have lost the power to act in healthy ways, we should get ourselves surrounded by like-minded people who will hold our hands through the withdrawal part, explain to us in no uncertain terms that this disease is one of Obsession—obsessing about those foods/substances that are supposed to make us happy, find Prince Charming, etc, etc and one of Compulsion—once the substance we are allergic to, in my case sugar and grains, is in my body, I don’t know what will happen next. I’m at the mercy of my compulsion.

I felt very alone at the end of his talk. I think I brought it on myself. I know what he writes about and I’m a huge cheerleader. But I forgot what it’s like to be in the company of people just learning what is going on in the food industry and how people like me are already dying from addiction. Here is the kicker: It is easy to think “well this happened in the tobacco industry, maybe things will change.” Guess who owns some of the largest industry companies?? The tobacco companies. Tobacco stopped making the billions it was making, so they found the next best thing. Philip Morris owns Kraft. RJ Reynolds owns Nabisco. Does the average person have a chance?

Michael Moss is an investigative journalist and author. In 2010, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on contaminated hamburgers. His previous book Salt, Sugar, Fat, was a New York Times best seller.  Hooked (2021) explores our complex relationship with processed food. It explains why certain foods leave us wanting more, and reveals how our brain chemistry and our evolutionary biology are exploited by the fast-food industry.

Sara Somers is an author, blogger, and retired Psychotherapist living in Paris, France. Saving Sara: For nearly fifty years, Sara Somers suffered from untreated food addiction. In this brutally honest and intimate memoir, Somers offers readers an inside view of a food addict’s mind, showcasing her experiences of obsessive cravings, compulsivity, and powerlessness regarding food.

*** ***

For those of you following the growth of my peacocks’ tails, here are the latest photos. The feathers of the tail are at least two inches longer than last week and I could see an eye or two. On his back, the brown and white feathers are beginning to turn into blue and green shell-shaped feathers that will eventually take up most of his back.

A bientôt

Sara

“Reading is an act of resistance”

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of meeting Jennifer Egan, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad. She was in Paris to celebrate the launching of her latest book The Candy House in French, as well as participating in Festival America. I belong to a writing group through AAWE (Association of American Women in Europe). Through a unique partnership of AAWE, Editions Robert Laffont, and AAWE, Jennifer spoke at the beautiful American Center for Art and Culture in the 16ème. My writing group had the honor of being volunteers at the event on Friday.

Lorie Lichtlen, interviewer. Jennifer Egan, author, Margueritee Cappelle, translator

I’m embarrassed to admit that before this summer I had not read any of her books. When I learned she was making a special appearance at ACAC, I read three of her books backwards! First the Candy House (2022), then Manhattan Beach (2016), and finally A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011). My overall impression was that this was one brilliant woman who had an ultra creative mind and was also very complex. I wasn’t sure I understood The Candy House very well and resorted to reading reviews in the NYTimes and New Yorker. I was a bit afraid that I wouldn’t be able to follow her thinking.

Signing both French and English language books

I had absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Jennifer walked into the venue with a backpack slung over her shoulder, a simple black top, a short skirt, and knee high boots. She greeted everyone with a huge smile. The room filled up with a large Franco-American crowd of at least one hundred people. Answering questions posed by the interviewer, she gave generous, thoughtful answers and captured everyones’ hearts. When someone asked her “Do you think young people are still reading?” her response got a rocking spontaneous applause. “Reading is the only way that someone can step into someone else’s head. The world now is full of devices. My sons have told me that apps are built to be addictive, but looking at the phone keeps you on the outside. I say put your device in another room and read for pleasure. Nobody is selling you anything when you read a book. Reading is an act of resistance!”

When asked about her favorite books, she responded, House of Mirth by Edith Warton and The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. “To me, they describe America.” When she signed the book I bought, she was as generous with her dedication as she was with her responses. It was clear to me that Jennifer was having fun. She used that word multiple times in describing her writing, how she wrote, what inspired her, how her thought processes went.

Opening Night Ceremony of Festival America

I mentioned that she was here as a part of Festival America. FA was founded twenty years ago by a Frenchman who wanted to shine a light on American writers who were under-represented by the media. African American authors, indigenous authors, Asian-American authors. It has evolved into an every other year celebration of American authors. “An unparalleled event, the AMERICA festival (invites), every two years in Vincennes (Val-de-Marne, France), around 70 authors from North America (United States, Canada, Quebec, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti). Since 2002, it has set itself the goal of celebrating diversity on the other side of the Atlantic – a cultural mosaic that is Indian, Hispanic, African, Anglo-Saxon, French and Francophone – and giving the public the opportunity to better understand their cultural realities.”-actes-sud.fr

Leila Mottley

I had read recently that a nineteen year old young woman from Oakland, Leila Mottley, was long-listed for the Man Booker prize. Her book, Nightcrawling, has been applauded everywhere, translated into French, and won the Festival America prize at the end of the festival. I was so surprised to see her on the stage with the other authors. Afterwards, I saw her and told her that I was probably the only other person in the building from Oakland. She didn’t seem particularly impressed!

“A news item inspired Leila Mottley to write her novel, the first manuscript that she dared to intend for publication” writes Le Point, a french magazine, “In 2016, the media talked a lot about the rape of a young girl by the police and I was struck to see that we knew nothing about it. (Yet) they kept showing how the police lived the case. Women of color are particularly the target of violence because the law does not protect them in the same way. By imagining Kiara, I wanted to give the visibility she didn’t have at the time to this young black woman, to her world. And, to follow her into the night of prostitution, she had herself reread by a sex worker.”

I haven’t read the book yet but am so proud of her, a follow Oakland resident. A friend told me that the Bay Area Book Festival, in conjunction with the Oakland Museum, is planning an event for her in April, on the launch date of the paperback. Leila was asked to say something at the Opening Ceremony and she giggled like the teenager she is and spoke eloquently about what matters to her. She is something.

To finish this blog, I’m including a video of the Native Americans who performed a drumming concert for us.

A bientôt,

Sara

The Silent Generation

My sister is a prolific reader. She recommends wonderful books I might not have stumbled on had she not alerted me. A couple of weeks ago, she suggested I read Deborah Cohen’s Last Call at The Hotel Imperial: The Reporters who took on a World at War (Random House, 2022). It is so new that I had to recommend it to the American Library in Paris. I have found it to be one of those non-fiction books that is so well-written, it is easy to forget that it is not a novel. Cohen tells the story of the foreign correspondents who went to Europe, Asia, Russia (I know Russian is considered Asia but….) and chased down any emerging story. Some went to great lengths to get an interview before their friends, who were also competitors, got there first. This is definitely not Fox News where those guys sit in comfy chairs telling the world how it should think, what their truths are, and haven’t moved an inch to talk to anyone except those who 100% agree with them.

On page 110, Ms. Cohen was describing “the so-called Lost Generation“. “Eventually the term “Lost Generation” came specifically to denote the American writers and expatriates who, in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, had ‘grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.’ Disillusioned by the Great War, alienated by American materialism, they’d moved to Europe in the 1920s, embracing what the critic Malcolm Cowley called ‘salvation by exile.’ ” “In using the term “lost,” psychologists were referring to the “disoriented, wandering, directionless” feelings that haunted many survivors of what had been one of the most horrific wars in modern history.”–Robert Longley at ThoughtCo

Actress Betty Field Dances in Party Scene From “The Great Gatsby”. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images 

This doesn’t sound so different from today. So many Americans, disillusioned by the state of affairs in the US that have followed one war after another that the US can’t win, are moving over here (Europe). Some say it’s worse now than it was then. But how does one gauge how bad something is. Many of those correspondents saw and wrote about Germany and the threat of Hitler. Maybe it’s only worse now because we are in the middle of it, day by excruciating day, waiting for the next body blow. I’ve read the above paragraph by Cohen many times. I have found some solace in it. I didn’t move here because of the politics but I have stayed here because it seems like a nicer, kinder place to live. I’m sure many French people would disagree with me. Their politics hit them the way American politics hits me. Cohen goes on to say that by 1930, “the dividends had evaporated, adult life beckoned, the half-finished novel would be put away. The “exiles” were returning, sobered-up and broke, newly conscious (perhaps) of the ties that bound them to other Americans.” p. 111.

I’m writing this because I often feel torn. There is a very good chance that democracy won’t survive what’s happening in the US. From over here, it seems the Democrats are whimpering along not doing much about the everyday decisions coming out of a very biased Supreme Court. My own opinion about the war in Ukraine is that the more Europe and US gets involved, the more likely a war on a much larger scale will break out. How can it not? And will it take violence, death, and hostile killings to find out if Democracy can still survive? It is only through a few flukes that the “good guys” won WWII.

I can’t imagine what I can do if I were living in the US that I can’t do here. Democrats Abroad is a vibrant organisation and very active. I feel much closer to the ‘action’ by going to DA meetings and meeting interesting people and politicians who travel and stop in Paris to talk to us. The amount of e-mails I get on a daily basis from so many organisations who want to crush Republicans but are loud, hostile, nasty, and sound just like the Republicans they say they want to get rid of is extraordinary. I unsubscribe to at least three a day but, just like Medusa, six more come the next day. They consider themselves completely entitled to access my e-mail then scream at me in order to shame me into giving my life savings to something that is probably not working. I even wrote one person running for Congress in California. I asked that he tell me what he stands FOR; that I was tired of hearing how awful his opponents are. I never heard back.

I wrote last week that many bloggers like me, non-professional opinionators, feel numb, unable to write. Thoughts like the ones that have been swirling around my brain, I believe, occur to try and break us out of sleep-walking, out of an overwhelm that is crushing. People get involved in world activities for many reasons. One of the main ones is an attempt to feel some power in a powerless world. “I’m doing something, I have a voice. Where can my voice best be heard?”

All of this has been going on in my head and reading Last Call at the Hotel Imperial has gotten me writing. If only to put down on paper the hard questions. Where can I be useful? How can I be useful? Am I doing enough already? Can writing words be a tool that I can use to make a difference? If 300 people read what I write, does that make a difference?

There aren’t any answers. But it is good to ask the questions. If I, and others like me, keep asking the questions, individual answers may get clearer.

Taking a selfie

Why did I title this blog The Silent Generation? I wanted to know if any research showed similarities to the Lost Generation and today. The Silent Generation is about to outnumber the Baby Boomers of which I’m a part of. The Silent Generation is the most materialistic and tech savvy generation. The Silent Generation feels let down by adults and politicians (who don’t always act like adults). The Lost Generation was undereducated and the Silent Generation is overeducated but both ended up feeling ill-prepared for the world they have been let loose in. In France, they don’t vote. In the US, their passion lies mostly with Climate Change. This generation has “…the highest level of stress than any other generation, suggesting a need for more conversation surrounding mental health and the pressures facing recent graduates.”–Evan Brown, The Warped Similarities Between Millennials and the Lost Generation (2020). This only underscores the questions I ask myself. What do I owe this generation? I often look at the future as I see it in my head and I’m grateful I may not be alive to see the worst of it.

And the questions just keep coming?

A bientôt,

Sara

When Writers Come to Paris

Because I live in Paris and because I love the American Library in Paris, I get to meet some great writers. I’m fairly sure this wouldn’t happen to me anywhere else. Paris is small for a world class city. Everyone comes to Paris. When Audrey Chapuis, Director of the American Library, introduced Ann Patchett at the Yearly ALP Gala last Thursday evening, she told us that Ann had sworn off traveling after the pandemic. Wasn’t going to do much anymore. But when offered the opportunity to speak at the largest fund raiser the Library has every year, she was easily persuaded. And I got to meet her. When I told her I was a budding author at 74 years old, she looked at me and said “Good for you!” Then she wrote ‘Write often, read everything, love in Paris’ on the title page of her latest book of essays These Precious Days.

Anne Patchett

Maybe it doesn’t mean much to the average person but it certainly does to me. I got to meet Ann Patchett! She wrote to me personally in my book. I’ve read the inscription every day. It makes me smile. Then comes the problem: when one’s favorite writers are people like Ann Patchett and George Saunders, it is hard not to compare my written words to their written words. They are great writers (in my humble opinion). Not only that, they are great speakers. It is not every author who is also someone who can captivate an audience. You can hear Ann’s talk on YouTube on the Library Channel. And if you haven’t already done so, listen to Saunders’ commencement speech on Kindness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruJWd_m-LgY

I’ve been writing creative non-fiction for over six years and a journal forever. I write this blog. I wrote a memoir of my eating disorder Saving Sara My Memoir of Food Addiction. I wrote another book with five women on the practicalities of abstaining from addictive binge foods. I’ve definitely honed my skills and learned the craft of writing non-fiction. Now I want to try my hand at fiction. I am a beginner. I love words. It shouldn’t be so hard to put a sentence together. Right? Wrong. With fiction, I first have to choose a Point of View (POV). In non-fiction, that’s a done deal, it’s my POV. Choosing the POV in novel writing is huge. Is it one of the main characters with all their baggage flavoring their thoughts? Is it a distant third person and the story is told from some unnamed observer?

I have an idea for a novel. I’ve had it for awhile now. It’s why I felt able to entertain the possibility of applying to the Stanford Writing Certificate program in novel writing. But to get into the program, as part of the application process, I have to submit 3000-6000 words of fiction. The application letter kindly says that it is ok to send in published work. They just want to know how the applicant writes. I not only don’t have published work, I don’t even have finished works. I have had to hire an editor to help me so that I don’t completely embarrass myself. She is the one who has stressed my need to pick a POV. I am a quick learner and I’m smart enough to know that if I were actually to write this novel, I need a structured environment with teaching and feedback to proceed. I just have to get in to the program.

Steven King started writing when he was nine years old. He started submitting his fiction to many different places when he was fourteen. Ann Patchett wrote as a teenager, published her first book when she was twenty-seven. George Saunders‘ story is more like mine. He wandered around doing many things in many different countries. I think he majored in a science in university. Since he started writing, he has won many awards including the Man Booker prize for his debut novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. And these are the people I find myself, hopelessly, comparing myself to. I told my editor. She said “That’s good. It means you will keep improving yourself.” I didn’t expect that.

A Class in a book for both writers and lovers of short stories.

So who else have I had the great good fortune to listen to while residing in Paris. Colsen Whitehead before he won the Pulitzer Prize; Richard Russo; Ta-Nehesi Coates was a visiting fellow and wrote most of his award winning book, Between the World and Me, down in a small cubicle reserved for Fellows; Lauren Collins, who writes for the New Yorker, married a frenchman and lives in Paris. She comes to the Library often to interview other writers. I subscribe to her newsletter and wonder if I ever could put together a sentence as she does.

Lauren Collins writes wonderful essays about France

Just a few days, I went to hear Colm Tóibín talk on James Joyce’s Ulysses. I’ve not yet been able to get through more than a few pages of Ulysses at a time. I went because it was Colm Tóibín. He wrote Brooklyn, made into a wonderful movie; The Magician about Thomas Mann another writer I tried to read but couldn’t get more than a few pages. (Colm told me to read Buddenbrooks. He said that was an easy book to read). Maybe it’s because he’s Irish! Mr. Tóibín makes anything sound fascinating. I loved The Magician and am now part way into The Master, his 2004 book on Henry James.

Colm Tóibín speaking at the American Library in Paris

I think you get the idea. I’m in Writing Mecca. If I can restrain the part of me that loves to say “You aren’t good enough,” I can listen and learn. I can say “Pay attention. Maybe one day you will be good enough.”

A bientôt,

Sara

Anatomy of a Scandal

During the winter, Netflix had a plethora of programs to choose from. It was a veritable paradise. Then the Award Shows came and went. Netflix and Amazon Prime slowed down their productions. (Netflix is having other problems but that is another post). One night three weeks ago, I decided to take a chance on a limited series called “Anatomy of a Scandal” starring Lady Mary. Her name is actually Michelle Dockery but who remembers that? It seemed to be just another British courtroom drama. I can’t tell you if it is a good production but it was/is a surprising show. With all the news about #MeToo and #Weinstein and all the women who have come forward, not one thing I’ve read has addressed the theme of ‘consent’ in the way this series does.

The plot involves a charismatic junior member of Parliament, married with two children, who has been accused of rape. He has allegedly raped a woman that he’d been having an affair with but had ended the relationship. The rape happened a week later. The man, James Whitehouse, is on trial but really on trial is the question of what does consent mean? We, the readers, are treated to the thinking of a number of women who aren’t sure how to say ‘no’. Who question their own sanity when a boy/man says “I’m just kidding”. Who don’t know their own mind when it comes to sex. Who aren’t sure whether going along with a boy’s wishes will help the relationship to continue. In other words, about 90% of us women.

I googled “How to talk about sex”. This is part of what I got.

When I was growing up, we had to take Sex Ed courses. It was embarrassing. No one wanted to take the classes and if we did, we didn’t know how to take them seriously. No classes were given to just us girls on how to make decisions about sex. We were only told ‘don’t have sex.’ Peyton Place was popular on TV and that was our sex education. I remember hearing boys talking about how when ‘no really means yes.’ I never knew how to think about any of this stuff.

The movie Peyton Place was soon followed by a three year evening soap opera that introduced the world to Mia Farrow

This show tackles all this. It defines rape within a marriage. I’ve always said that I have never been raped. In fact, I was. By a boyfriend who would not hear No when I kept saying it. We were on a vacation and had had an argument. I’m sure that he never for a moment gave it a second thought, that that time might have been problematic for me. And I’m sure that when we broke up months later, it never occurred to him that what had happened on vacation had had a huge impact on my feelings towards him. I didn’t say anything, I was too confused myself.

Probably not the original book cover

After I finished watching the show, I discovered that I had the original book by Sarah Vaughn on my Kindle. I have no idea how long it has been there. At least two weeks had gone by since I finished the show so I started to read the book. Again, I can’t tell you if it’s good literature. It’s very compelling. It’s a best seller according to the latest cover. The series changed aspects of the story as so many do when going from book to TV but the basic premise is the same. When does ‘No’ mean ‘No’ no matter if one is in a relationship or not. And in both the book and the series, the horror of what the ‘victim’ has to reveal in front of who knows how many people and still she may not be believed. The man is always right unless proved otherwise beyond any reasonable doubt.

Right now in the US, white men, with the aid of one woman, who call themselves Judges are in the process of taking choice away from women. Most of my grown up life has been with Roe vs Wade. But now that may disappear. It is okay for men to rape their girlfriends (and others) but the women have no say in whether to end a pregnancy that may result. From the vantage point of France, the US keeps looking more and more insane. Backward and very, very mean. I don’t want to get into discussing Roe vs Wade and what’s going on because of the Supreme Court leak. There are so many places to read opinions on that. But how it relates to men and rape….well, I think that is huge.

I think more books are going to be published on this subject. I saw a review of one that will be published in the Fall. However, Anatomy of a Scandal is one I really recommend because of the treatment. There are two rapes in the book both by the same person but different in nature. We are flies on the wall to courtroom scenes where a woman is torn to shreds to reveal her experience. We are privy to thoughts of the wife and one of the rape victims. And there is the whole issue of white male entitlement. This probably sounds like yet another angry woman but these things are real. People are fighting and lying and doing dirty deeds to keep these things in place. Women may have the vote (maybe that will be taken away also), women may be able to work outside the house though it will be a rare day when the average woman can earn the same salary as the average man in the same position.

There is a movie. I don’t know how old it is. The title is What Do Women Want? I never saw it and have no right to discuss it. But the title…..I remember thinking back when it came out that I hated the title. Who was this film maker to make a joke of this. But the truth was, I had very little idea what I wanted. Not just sexually but professionally, with friendships. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. I have good friends though I’ve had to drop a few a long the way as they belonged to another life. I literally fell into work that I loved and had the same career for thirty-four years. I retired while I still could do other things. I worked for the Mayor of Oakland and had a three year course in civics. I couldn’t have bought that in a university. And now I live in Paris, am learning French in my 70s, and applying to Stanford University!

But none of the above is any indication of the chatter of questions that go on in my mind. Wondering, always wondering if I’m good enough, kind enough, thoughtful enough, have I done enough, am I lazy, on and on. Nothing I’m sure that the rest of us aren’t asking ourselves on a daily basis.

I’m curious. Who of my readers has seen the series or read the book? Did it inspire any ruminating within you as it did with me? Please leave a comment so I know how others around the world are thinking presently about this topic.

A bientôt,

Sara