Bøger af Elizabeth Benedict

By turns somber and funny but above all provocative, Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness: A View of My Own is a most unconventional memoir. With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling skills of a seasoned novelist, she brings to life her cancer diagnosis and committed hypochondria. As she discovers multiplying lumps in her armpit, she describes her initial terror, interspersed with moments of self-mocking levity as she indulges in "natural remedies," among them chanting Tibetan mantras, drinking shots of wheat grass, and finding medicinal properties in chocolate babka. She tracks the progression of her illness from muddled diagnosis to debilitating treatment as she gathers sustenance from her family and an assortment of urbane, ironic friends, including her fearless "cancer guru." In brief, explosive chapters with startling titles - "Was it the Krazy Glue?" and "Not Everything Scares the Shit out of Me" - Benedict investigates existential questions: Is there a cancer personality? Can trauma be passed on generationally? Can cancer be stripped of its warlike metaphors? How do doctors' own fears influence their comments to patients? Is there a gendered response to illness? Why isn't illness one of literature's great subjects? And delving into her own history, she wonders if having had children would have changed her life as a writer and hypochondriac. Post diagnosis, Benedict asks, "Which fear is worse: the fear of knowing or the reality of knowing? (164)"Throughout, Benedict's humor, wisdom, and warmth jacket her fears, which are personal, political, and ultimately global, when the world is pitched into a pandemic. Amid weighty concerns and her all-consuming obsession with illness, her story is filled with suspense, secrets, and even the unexpected solace of silence.

The hilarious opening of Almost does little to prepare either the reader or the narrator, Sophy Chase, for the drama of what is to come. Almost divorced, Sophy is in bed with her new lover — an art dealer and father of four young children — when the police call her with shocking news. Her almost ex-husband, Will, has died suddenly on the Massachusetts island where she left him just months before. Dazed and grief-stricken, Sophy takes off at once for Swansea Island, hurled back into a life and family — her husband's grown twin daughters and their prickly mother — she had intended to leave behind.In the tension-filled days that follow, Sophy's past and present collide as she struggles to find out how her husband died, what role she might have had in the sudden disappearance of her boyfriend's ten-year-old daughter, and how she can maintain her equilibrium. The gulf between the island's summer people and its year-rounders is brought vividly to life in the process, as is the particular beauty of a setting that resembles Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.A story about starting over and looking back, about the pain of staying and the consequences of leaving, and about a woman's longing for children, Almost presses us to wonder how much responsibility we bear for other people's happiness — and who exactly we are when we're in limbo. By this riveting novel's end, Sophy has it all figured out — almost.

Twelve years after it was first published, The Joy of Writing Sex remains the classic writer's resource on creating compelling sex scenes. Elizabeth Benedict covers all the issues, from the first time, to married sex and adultery, to sex in the age of AIDS.Her instruction, supported with examples from the works of today's most respected writers-among them, Dorothy Allison, Russell Banks, Alan Hollinghurst, Joyce Carol Oates, Carol Shields, and John Updike-focuses on crafting believable sex scenes that hinge on freshness of character, dialogue, mood, and plot.In this revised edition, Benedict addresses the latest sexual revolution, intimacy on the Internet; adds new interviews with Edmund White, Darren Strauss, Stephen McCauley, and other writers; and updates her selections to include examples from the best fiction of the past few years.

These twenty-seven "hair pieces" offer up reflections and revelations about family, race, religion, ritual, culture, motherhood, politics, celebrity, what goes on in African American kitchens and at Hindu Bengali weddings, alongside stories about the influence of Jackie Kennedy, Lena Horne, Farrah Fawcett, and the Grateful Dead.