Alice Mattison

On the first page of The Book Borrower, Toby Ruben and Deborah Laidlaw meet in 1975 in a New York City playground, where the two women are looking after their babies. Deborah lends Toby a book, Trolley Girl,--a memoir about a long ago trolley strike and three Jewish sisters, one a fiery revolutionary--that will disappear and reappear throughout the twenty-two years these women are friends. Through two decades Deborah and Toby raise their children, embark on teaching careers, and argue about politics, education, and their own lives. One day during a hike, they have an argument that cannot be resolved--and the two women take different, permanent paths--but it is ultimately the borrowed book that will bring them back together. With sensitivity and grace, Alice Mattison shows how books can rescue us from our deepest sorrows; how the events of the outside world play into our private lives; and how the bonds between women are enduring, mysterious, and laced with surprise.

A Novel

The Book Borrower

The Kite and the String is the only writing guide to explore both the stages of creative work and the practise of developing effective attitudes. Writing well does not result from following rules and instructions, but from a blend of spontaneity, discipline and particular attitudes toward the work. Writers must learn to be tolerant of the early stages, to move from jottings and ideas to a messy first draft and then onward from there into the work of revision. As acclaimed, award-winning writer Alice Mattison shows in this inspiring guide, understanding these stages is key.

How to Write with Spontaneity and Control - and Live to Tell the Tale

The Kite and the String

Acclaimed author Alice Mattison’s new novel explores the hard choices a young woman and her friends made decades earlier at the height of the Vietnam War. Decades ago in Brooklyn, three girls demonstrated against the Vietnam War. Helen became a violent revolutionary and was killed in a protest in 1970. Val wrote a controversial book that was essentially a novelization of Helen’s life. And Olive became an editor and writer, now comfortably settled with her husband, Griff, in New Haven.When Olive is asked to write an essay about Val’s book, doing so brings back to the forefront Olive and Griff’s tangled histories. Things only become more fraught when Griff borrows Olive’s treasured first edition of the novel—and loses it. Then Griff’s new colleague, Jean, finds the book and begins reading it, setting off a series of events that will introduce new conflicts, tragedies, and friendships into the precarious balance of Olive and Griff’s once stable home. Conscience, the dazzling new novel from award-winning author Alice Mattison, paints the nuanced relationships between the palpable personalities of Olive, Griff, and Jean with her signature wit and precision. And as Mattison explores the ways in which women make a difference—for good or ill—in the world, she elegantly weaves together the past and the present, and the political and the personal.

Conscience

Men Giving Money, Women Yelling is Alice Mattison s latest collection in which the characters lives are told in tales that overlap or echo one another. At the center of the stories is Denny Ring, a young man nobody quite knows. Other characters include John Corey, a contractor who renovates old houses in New Haven, Connecticut; his younger brother Eugene, a volunteer at a soup kitchen; and his older brother Cameron, who is a lawyer specializing in obnoxious law. John s assistant, Tom, is in love with his former English teacher, Ida Feldman, and Charlotte LoPresti, a social worker who interviews the Corey brothers and their aged father, is friends with Pam Shepherd, a social worker who s in charge of the house for psychiatric patients that John and Tom are renovating.

Intersecting Stories

Men Giving Money, Women Yelling

From critically acclaimed author Alice Mattison, “a charmer” (New York Times) whose “voice is like that of no one else writing today” (Kirkus)—comes a profoundly moving meditation on love, friendship, and the unforgotten past One quiet spring day in 1989, Constance Tepper arrives from Philadelphia to watch over her mother's Brooklyn apartment and her orange cat. Con's mother, Gert, has left town to visit her old friend Marlene Silverman in Rochester. Marlene has always seemed alluring and powerful to Con, and ever since Con was a little girl, the long-standing bond between Gert and Marlene has piqued her curiosity. Now she finds herself wondering again what keeps them together. Con's week in Brooklyn will take a surprising turn when she wakes to find that someone has entered her mother's apartment and her own purse is missing. Stranded, with no money, she begins to phone family and friends. By the end of that week, she will experience a series of troubling discoveries about her marriage, her job, and her family's history, and much of her life will be changed forever. In the fall of 2003, now living in Brooklyn and working as a lawyer, Con has almost forgotten that strange and shattering week. But a series of unsettling reminders and surprising discoveries—including traces of a lost elevated train line through Brooklyn—will lead to grief, love, and more questions. At last, a confrontation between Marlene and Con's daughter will unravel some of the mysteries of the past.

Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn

Acclaimed author Alice Mattison’s new novel explores the hard choices a young woman and her friends made decades earlier at the height of the Vietnam War. Decades ago in Brooklyn, three girls demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and each followed a distinct path into adulthood. Helen became a violent revolutionary. Val wrote a controversial book, Bright Morning of Pain, which was essentially a novelization of Helen’s all-too-short but vibrant life. And Olive became an editor and writer, now comfortably settled with her husband, Griff, in modern-day New Haven. When Olive is asked to write an essay about Val’s book, a work that attracts and repulses her in equal measure, doing so brings back to the forefront Olive and Griff’s tangled histories and their complicated reflections on that tumultuous time in their young lives. Things only become more fraught when Griff borrows Olive’s treasured first edition of the novel—and loses it. Then Griff’s quirky and audacious new colleague, Jean Argos, finds the book and begins reading it, setting off a series of events that will introduce new conflicts, tragedies, and friendships into the precarious balance of Olive and Griff’s once stable home. Conscience, the dazzling new novel from award-winning author Alice Mattison, paints the nuanced relationships between the palpable personalities of Olive, Griff, and Jean with her signature wit and precision. And as Mattison explores the ways in which women make a difference—for good or ill—in the world, she elegantly weaves together the past and the present, and the political and the personal.

Conscience: A Novel

On the day they first meet in a city playground, Deborah Laidlaw lends Toby Ruben a book called Trolley Girl, the memoir of a forgotten trolley strike in the 1920s, written by the sister of a fiery Jewish revolutionary who played an important, ultimately tragic role in the events. Young mothers with babies, Toby and Deborah become instant friends. It is a relationship that will endure for decades—through the vagaries of marriage, career, and child-rearing, through heated discussions of politics, ethics, and life—until an insurmountable argument takes the two women down divergent paths. But in the aftermath of crisis and sorrow, it is a borrowed book, long set aside and forgotten, that will unite Toby and Deborah once again.

From bestselling and award-winning author Alice Mattison comes a breathtaking new novel following two best friends from Brooklyn, exploring the way in which the world and their lives change over the course of the 20th century. The deft literary touch that readers have grown to love in novels such as Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn and The Book Borrower, as well as story collections such as In Case We’re Separated, combine in a marvelous narrative of friendship and family, with rich, complicated characters who grow and change together over the course of seventy-five years. Fans of generational stories such as East of Eden, or novels of friendship such as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, will be swept away by the intimate beauty of Mattison’s latest triumph, When We Argued All Night.

Alice Mattison

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