"Daringly, disarmingly raw and honest
... haunting, soulful."
-Booklist
* A New Pages Editor's Pick *
"Whatever form she chooses for whatever story she has to tell,
Rosner's work stays close to home, and close to the bone. ...
[She] paints...with a fine artist's brush, the assuredness of her hand
on the page...making poetry out of circumstances that
are anything but." --Chicago Tribune
"Whatever form she chooses for whatever story she has to tell,
Rosner's work stays close to home, and close to the bone. ...
[She] paints...with a fine artist's brush, the assuredness of her hand
on the page...making poetry out of circumstances that
are anything but." --Chicago Tribune
A fearless new work from prize-winning writer Elizabeth Rosner, author of the novels The Speed of Light, Blue Nude, and Electric City
Composed over a period of some twenty years, Gravity is Elizabeth Rosner's profoundly searching account of her experience as the daughter of Holocaust survivors. In an extraordinarily powerful mix of poetry and prose, Rosner traces the earliest remembered resonances of her parents' past and her dawning awareness of the war history that colored her family home during her youth in Schenectady, New York. She recounts her false starts in raising the subject with her father (a survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp), his piecemeal revelations, and their eventual travels together to the sites of the nightmare in Germany. And she evokes, courageously and heart-wrenchingly, her search for identity against the gravitational pull of her parents' experience and the traditional upbringing they've given her.
Like Rosner's celebrated novels, Gravity plumbs the deep complexities of inherited grief, but here the author discloses, with breathtaking candor and sensitivity, "what it felt like to grow up inside my family." Also featuring spellbinding artwork by Lola Fraknoi, these astonishing pages remind us that history happens at home and that the past is something we all embody, knowingly or not.
Composed over a period of some twenty years, Gravity is Elizabeth Rosner's profoundly searching account of her experience as the daughter of Holocaust survivors. In an extraordinarily powerful mix of poetry and prose, Rosner traces the earliest remembered resonances of her parents' past and her dawning awareness of the war history that colored her family home during her youth in Schenectady, New York. She recounts her false starts in raising the subject with her father (a survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp), his piecemeal revelations, and their eventual travels together to the sites of the nightmare in Germany. And she evokes, courageously and heart-wrenchingly, her search for identity against the gravitational pull of her parents' experience and the traditional upbringing they've given her.
Like Rosner's celebrated novels, Gravity plumbs the deep complexities of inherited grief, but here the author discloses, with breathtaking candor and sensitivity, "what it felt like to grow up inside my family." Also featuring spellbinding artwork by Lola Fraknoi, these astonishing pages remind us that history happens at home and that the past is something we all embody, knowingly or not.
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PRAISE FOR GRAVITY:
"A lavish collection."-Catamaran Literary Reader "Brilliant in concept and execution ... magnificent and unpredictable, guiding the reader through an untangling of history, love, anguish, and, ultimately, the hard beauty of revelation."--INDIGO MOOR, author of Taproot and Through the Stonecutter's Window “Stunning ... This is a personal history that becomes, through Rosner’s unflinching honesty and unerringly precise images, universal in its import. ... Defying the sentimental even as she dares to be beautifully tender, Rosner brings us to the realization that love, too, is part of the gravity holding us together.”--LYNNE KNIGHT, author of Again and Night in the Shape of a Mirror "Gravity is admirable for its transparency of feeling and understated precision. ... Perhaps the truest test of any book is whether you feel compelled to share it with a friend. By the time I was halfway through, I was eager to share it with many!"--ELLEN BASS, author of Like a Beggar and The Human Line |
PRAISE FOR ELIZABETH ROSNER:
“Rosner [has] opened up a new path to understanding certain emotional aspects of the second generation. She herself is the owner of this unwanted heritage, and she has unburdened herself so eloquently—and with haunting dignity.”--JewishFamily.com “Rosner attests to the beauty necessary for survival in this world.”--JBooks.com “The emotional impact of Rosner’s material is considerable.”--Publishers Weekly “[Rosner’s] sensitivity to detail acts as a love letter to the world.”--EDIE MEIDAV, author of Crawl Space “Rosner has a painter’s eye and a poet’s ear. … [Her work is] both heady and tangible, both unflinching and generous, but always beautiful to read.” --KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club |
Elizabeth Rosner is the author of the bestselling novels The Speed of Light and Blue Nude, as well as Electric City (Counterpoint Press, 2014). Her fiction has been translated into nine languages, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Elle, the Forward, and numerous anthologies. She has taught literature and writing for more than thirty years, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
POETRY/NONFICTION
ISBN: 978-0-9893023-3-3
112 pages
8.5 x 5.5 trade paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9893023-3-3
112 pages
8.5 x 5.5 trade paperback
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