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Glimmering
Girls
A Novel of the Fifties
Merrill Joan Gerber
Library of American Fiction,
Terrace Books
Publication date: April 2005
ISBN 0-299-21060-X Cloth $26.95 t
Reviews:
[Reviews will be posted
here as soon as they are available.]
Blurbs:
"As a woman of that period
I enjoyed particularly the detailed account of dorm regulations,
of surveillance, of two "feet on the floor" rules for
evening guests. [Gerber] hasn't forgotten much about what it
was like to move into adulthood—sexual and social—in
a world so restrictive, fearful, and distrustful of natural impulses."—Janet
Burstein, author of Telling the "Little Secrets":
American Jewish Writers of the New Wave
"Gerber's fine attention to craft
is abundantly evident, from the wonderful pacing of the narrative
to her sympathetic and adroit rendering of her independent and
intelligent artist-as-a-young-woman protagonist struggling through
an era of American life that refuses to extol such qualities
in women."—Andrew Furman, author of Contemporary
Jewish-American Writers and the Multicultural Dilemma: Return
of the Exiled
"Readers will enjoy Glimmering
Girls for its combination of poetry, sexuality, humor, and
yearning in a young woman's life."—Charlotte Zoe Walker,
SUNY Oneonta, former NEA creative writing fellow, and O. Henry
Award winner
Author's
Bio:
Merrill Joan Gerber teaches fiction
writing at the California Institute of Technology. Her many novels,
short-story collections, and non-fiction works include Botticelli Blue Skies and the
prize-winning King of the World and Kingdom of Brooklyn.
Her most recent books are Gut
Feelings: A Writer's Truths and Minute Inventions and
This Is a Voice from Your Past: New and Selected Stories.
For additional information about Merrill
Joan Gerber and her books
visit the California Institute of Technology Web site www.cco.caltech.edu/~mjgerber
Excerpt from
Glimmering Girls
"Throw 'em down!"
"Throw 'em down!"
"Throw 'em down!"
The roar of men's voices rises up from the street like a geyser,
falling away, then shooting upward with new intensity.
"Okay . . . throw 'em down my panties," Liz says, reaching
back an arm to pull open her dresser drawer without even lifting
her eyes from the pages of her book. Feeling around, she plucks
out a pair of red lace panties and tosses them over to Francie.
"Go on, toss them out the window. Give those sweet Florida
farm boys a little thrill. You know how boys are, Francie, at
this age, with their hot little hormones . . . ."
The voices are deep, surprisingly in tune: a boys' church choir
grown up. Francie pictures the moist red lips of the men, their
earnest, needy faces upturned to the windows of the cloistered
women.
"You're not serious, Liz. You must be kidding, aren't you?"
Liz is reading again, with perfect concentration. In her sheer
white baby doll pajamas she looks about eight years old. The
coil of her crook-necked lamp flares on the desk like a cobra,
its hooded head sending out an aura of light around her yellow
hair.
"They got needs, honey," Liz says . . . "You know
needs? Nature has got its requirements, sweetheart, and you can't
go against nature."—excerpt from Glimmering Girls
For more information in addition
to this press kit contact our publicity manager,
phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu
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Cover image:
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Author Photo
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