Leslie Jamison News

Somebody took The Gin Closet on a date.

The guy had a beef brisket sandwich, which he seemed to enjoy, and quoted the book–amusingly–on eating disorders.

Check out my author interview at the Simon and Schuster website.

Includes me talking about: my jaw, my jobs, my teenage melodrama, and my favorite capital-letter Themes and Issues. Also: my favorite character.

The brainy and eloquent lady at Sasha and the Silverfish has just posted a review of The Gin Closet.

You can read it here.

But here are some excerpts:

“Can I tell you how awesome the very concept of a Gin Closet is? It’s that little room in a house where you think you can store away all your demons. In Tilly’s case, it’s filled with bottles of gin…One of the things I admired about this novel was that it was calmly violent. It was leashing in all that angst and pain, making every scene charged, making every character interaction brim with meaning…Jamison’s language blew me away. She has a way saying things plainly, but true, and raw, and honest—when the situation demands it.”

There also some neat musings on pacing, bathtubs, unspeaking, and excuses. It’s a smart read, and one that was willing to question what it loved in the book, in order to explore it–something I appreciated.

The review that will run in Booklist mid-February:

The Gin Closet. Jamison, Leslie (Author) Feb 2010. 320 p. Free Press, hardcover, $25.00. (9781439153215).

First-time novelist Jamison portrays three generations of “wounded women” in an exquisite blues of a novel. The youngest, pretty Stella, is living the hip, single New York life, but she takes the train to Connecticut at night to care for Lucy, her grandmother, from whom age is stealing strength and clarity. When Stella learns a family secret, that she has a long-estranged aunt, she finds Tilly in a trailer park in Nevada and becomes entangled in her toxic sorrows. Narrating by turns in each lonely woman’s voice, Jamison creates emotionally complex scenes of harsh revelation in language as scorching as the gin Tilly downs in terrifying quantities. Stella is nearly as bedeviled, having struggled with the weird, dicey power of anorexia. The two make their way to Tilly’s banker son’s fortress of an apartment in a sketchy neighborhood in San Francisco, where all three are forced to recognize the limits of love. With trenchant cameos by other women teetering on the brink, Jamison’s novel of solitary confinement within one’s pain is hauntingly beautiful.

I will be reading in New York and New Haven to celebrate the launch of The Gin Closet in February.

If you are in either city (or Iowa City in March!) come see me.

There will be snacks and possibly gin, possibly in closets.

TUESDAY, 2/16  BookCourt, Reading & Signing, 7:00PM

163 Court Street (between Pacific & Dean)

Co-Hosted by A Public Space

WEDNESDAY, 2/17 Center for Fiction, Reading & Signing

17 E 47th Street, 7:00PM

MONDAY, 2/22  Yale University, Reading, 7:00PM

Reception & Signing at Atticus Bookstore

1082 Chapel Street, 8:00PM

THURSDAY, 3/4  Prairie Lights, Reading & Signing

7:00 pm

We got some play.

Breaking The Spine is a reading blog from a magazine editor based in Birmingham. Every Wednesday she chooses a new “anticipated” book and shares it with a small community of fellow anticipators.

Another blogger gives a heads-up at her site Best New Fiction (BNF).

Publisher’s Weekly just ran a starred review of The Gin Closet. You can scroll for a few minutes to find it on their website.

Or you can read it right here:

“Jamison’s beautifully written debut follows independent young New Yorker Stella and her estranged aunt Tilly as they form some version of a family. Stella is disenchanted with her life and job as a journalist’s personal assistant; Tilly is a professional lost soul, a former prostitute, and an unsuccessful recovering alcoholic. To all appearances, Stella is the savior, finding Tilly, who’s been shunned by the family, to rescue her; but through alternating first-person accounts, the reader grows to view the two women as equals. Their experiences with men especially mirror one another’s; Tilly has merely had worse luck. Stella describes wanting a man, “any man, who could offer his face as a label for my loneliness”; later, recalling men she’s been with, Tilly says, “most of them I didn’t even like that much, but they seemed like the easiest way to change my own life.” The relationship between Stella and Tilly is compelling, as are their relationships with auxiliary characters, like Stella’s brother and Tilly’s son, but what truly drives the novel is Jamison’s gorgeous prose. (Feb.)”

Saving the world, one poem at a time. Read mine here.

You can also find jitters,  numerous tiny men making a case for themselves, a new way of eating, and small talk from my lover.