Bøger af Ellen Pall

Melanie is a songwriter in L.A. who's sick of California. She returns to New York, takes a Greenwich Village apartment, and intends to resume her career and reestablish ties with her family. Life, however, is unpredictable. A chance meeting in an elevator leads to a relationship with Lucian, a beautiful young actor whose previous and--as it turns out--continuing relationship with Martin Ivory causes confusion and pain. It's July in molten New York, and Melanie is due in Maine, at Milk Lake, where her widowed mother, a doomed arranger of other people's lives, is reluctant to preside at her son-in-law's marriage to her cook/housekeeper. But that's the mere ticking of plot. The interest of this accomplished first novel lies in the character of Melanie, a woman whose unillusioned acceptance of how we live is delivered in an ironic, sweet-sour voice only the chastened romantic heart could muster. BACK EAST is a seamless novel about the dues everyone who loves somehow must pay.

Brought together by the sudden return of the erudite father who abandoned them nearly thirty years ago, the five Ginzburg children reunite in mid-life. Gifted and ambitious, competitive and funny, the siblings grudgingly put their complicated lives on hold to spend a weekend at the Catskills farmhouse that was once their summer home. Swept instantly into the treacherous, bittersweet tangle of old family alliances and resentments, they skirmish, match wits and rehash the past, meanwhile trying for all they're worth to ignore the ominous drumbeat of the passing hours--for their long-lost father, suffering from leukemia, is in the last moments of his life. With sharp wit and passionate empathy, Ellen Pall explores the innermost secrets of an engaging family as its strength is put to the test.