Groups Feed

Having read Susan Gilman’s vivid depiction of immigrant poverty and its repercussions in her novel The ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street, I wondered what else she had done.  This hilarious and human memoir makes the experience of growing up in New York come alive.  Middle School at Friends Seminary is a brief chapter in the life of a a writer gifted in remembering the details of her school years in all their confusion and incongruity.  What a kindergartener she was.  Had to wear a tutu.  Had nothing for Show ‘n’ Tell so blurted out that she was changing her name to Rhinestone – no, wait a minute, to Sapphire.  And what an obliging school; she was henceforth called her Sapphire. 

Among her potent fantasies was the dream of running into Mick Jagger at a dinner party and catching his eye. This improbable fiction came true. The encounter was not as…

When I spent my junior year in Paris, I used to walk about the city on Saturdays with my Guide Michelin.  It was like having an erudite friend who knew all there was to know about the history and architecture of this magnificent city.  “Look up and note the sixteenth-century drainpipe in the form of a gargoyle.” Michael Kimmelman’s book, The Intimate City, offers similar companionship for those exploring another magnificent city, our own New York.

As architectural critic of the Times, Michael got the idea during COVID of taking walks around the city with a succession of “cicerones,” a charming old term for knowledgeable guides.  This book originates in those walks. Among his walking companions are Eric Sanderson, who led the Mannahatta Project, which dove into the ecological complexity of the city, the author Suketa Mehta, who brought an immigrant’s perspective to the exploration of Jackson Heights, and the…

Laura graduated in the late seventies.  While she was a student at Friends, she was a drummer for a group called the Student Teachers that played regularly at CBGB. Her experience in that world is recorded in a book I read and reported about on this site a few years ago.  Now she has collaborated with Liz Lamere, the widow of Suicide’s Alan Vega, on an in-depth biography of Alan, from his childhood as a brilliant kid in Brooklyn to his death. 

His childhood and youth are at odds with the iconoclastic performer he became.   At first, he seemed destined to become a renowned astrophysicist. Then he began to excel in the world of painting and sculpture.  Even as he shone in these divergent areas, there was another hidden identity that awaited discovery. 

The experience of seeing Iggy Pop altered his life.  The performance he witnessed was revolutionary.  Iggy Pop…

Amanda by H S Cross

I’m just guessing, but I contend that at least half of all works of fiction conform to the Shakespearean premise that the course of true love never did run smooth. The impediments to true love are what keep us watching or reading for at least the duration of a play or a novel. If the obstacles are overcome, then we have a comedy of some sort. If not, well we have Romeo and Juliet. So sad. These hindrances often involve an irrational parent, restrictive social norms, big divides of age, background, race, or class, or collective madness as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. How much fun or angst we encounter depends on the inventiveness of the author. In this novel, Amanda, also called Marion, helps the author out by creating her own complications to a beautiful love.

In Amanda, a novel set in post-World War I England, a…

The Aviator and the Showman by Laurie Shapiro ’81

This intensively researched book puts to rest some of the myths surrounding Amelia Earhart and, by virtue of going into every detail of extant data, shows us that this story is of two intertwined lives. Amelia Earhart is a household name, but many of us know little about George Putnam, her husband. He was the showman, the wizard manipulating the legend from behind the curtain. Though many of his contemporaries found him unpleasant, he knew how to play the game of getting publicity for Amelia, and for making her the central woman in the history of aviation.

Amelia was an early feminist. Terribly ambitious, she worked to make a name for herself and to break new records. She wanted to be the female Lindy and indeed was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Her last trip, of course, is…

A Steinway on the Beach, Wounds and Other Blessings by Roger Rosenblatt ‘58

A Steinway on the Beach is a series of meditations, whimsical musings, free associations, and questions, both answered and unanswered, on the theme expressed in the subtitle, that misfortunes may be fortunate. At the center is the author’s mind as it meanders, fueled by events (such as the piano, which astoundingly washed up on the beach) and remembrances both of lived events and of all the lore – literary, biblical and historical—that this mind (and heart) has absorbed.  Although the form feels free and somewhat random, a closer look confirms that the topic of how the hurtful and the helpful, both always present, are emmeshed in each other.

One insight came from Lewis Thomas, the renowned father of another Friends writer, Abigail Thomas ’59. He called our very existence a “wonderful mistake.” It is a tenet of…

How to Befriend the Moon Goddess by Yobe Qiu and Illustrated by Stephanie Teo (faculty)

In this gorgeously illustrated picture book, two young children long to find a way to make friends with the Moon Goddess. Images from Asian lore merge seamlessly with modern rockets as the children devise ways to approach her, including following the jade rabbit.  It turns out that what the Moon Goddess is looking for in a friend is not so different from what we are all looking for.   Asian American children will enjoy this access to their cultural heritage and non-Asian children will appreciate that all kids long for friends who will make them feel they belong.

Let Me Take You Down, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, by Jonathan Cott

Jonathan Cott has a long history with The Beatles, having interviewed them over the years for Rolling Stone. Jonathan interviewed Lennon for nine hours just a few days before he was murdered. This was John Lennon’s last interview.

In this book, Jonathan follows the format which he used in his book about Maurice Sendak. He interviews individuals who will have a particular way of looking at the work in question. In the Sendak book we were looking at Outside Over There. In this book, we are looking at two songs that came out in 1967 and were the two sides of one record. Apparently, there was pressure on the Beatles to get something out before Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was ready to be released. In Spain. John wrote Strawberry Fields Forever, with its…

September 17, a novel by Amanda West Lewis

This book is based on fact. On September 17, 1940, a ship called the City of Benares, carrying among its passengers 90 children went down en route from England to Canada. Only 13 children survived this tragic attack by the Germans. We see this gripping and meticulously researched account through the eyes of three of these children. Like most of the youngsters aboard, Ken and Bess have already undergone the ordeal of separation from their families. The third child, Sonia, is traveling first class with her mother and brother. The great irony of the book is that the parents thought they were sending their children out of harm’s way by sparing them the trauma of bombings at home. In most cases, they were sending them to a terrifying early death.

The book lifts the curtain on what it must have…