Leslie Jamison News

A new review in the SF Chronicle has arrived. Thank you Malena Watrous!

It got some parts so right–as in, so close to my own feelings as I wrote—that it was scary.

“But fans of chick-lit be warned. In spite of a recognizable framework and archetypal characters, “The Gin Closet” is no escapist fantasy but a slow and steady heartbreak. It is also exquisitely beautiful. Jamison writes like a poet, her imagery breathtaking, her sentences unfurling unpredictably, to the novel’s devastating end…”The Gin Closet” is a classical tragedy. The characters are doomed to repeat their mistakes, haunted by the past, unable to save themselves or each other. But while the plot precludes redemption, language is a saving grace both for the novel and in their lives. We may not be able to change, but at least we can tell our stories, finding flashes of beauty even in the ugliest things.

A new essay on Faulkner, an old friend.

Check it out here: 1 girl, 3 guys, 1 book.

A teaser:

“underwear and shadows, moonshine and corn cobs…”

Focuses on the book’s treatment of “love’s more complex geometries.”

This man would like someone to translate The Gin Closet into Spanish.

I would love that.

how The Gin Closet ended up on Diane von Furstenberg’s To-Do list.

But here it is.

Along with gluten-free cookies and Rufus Wainwright in Poughkeepsie.

An absolutely breathtaking review from The New Haven Advocate. This is the kind of response that makes me feel honored and grateful to be a writer.

Read the whole thing here.

“Jamison’s voice is resoundingly unique, her prose both raw and precise, fully attuned to poetry without ever rescinding an energetic narrative impulse…Jamison trusts the consciousness of her characters and her readers. At the very points a lesser writer would stumble, lurch and turn away, she stands still, stares and turns our faces to stare along with her. Her characters quiver, wanting to be both seen and unseen in their shame. We peer at Stella peering at herself in the heat of her own sickness, anorexia, on a subway car. We see Tilly, seeing herself, “transparent — like all of my thoughts were coming through my skin like sweat [...] I was wet with need and weakness, dripping everywhere, ruining everything.” We see both women dream dreams of false magistery, of the salvation of intimacy with married men, of the golden “amber fingers” of liquor that pulp and pump life out, not in…Jamison is not just marching to the beat of her own drum. She is banging out a brutal, ecstatic symphony upon it. The Gin Closet dares readers to understand how and why we abrade our bodies, ourselves, to manifest the incommunicable to one another.”

I just got home from an incredible reading at The Center For Fiction (nee The Mercantile Library) an incredible little gem in the gritty heart of midtown: oak walls, marble busts, a sexy librarian, fiction and nothing but fiction as far as the eye could see. I read with Jonathan Dee, author of The Privileges, and Amy Greene, whose debut–called Bloodroot–just came out last month. It was a pleasure to read with both of them, and to be hosted by Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com. My friend Colleen–writer/nomad/beauty–was there to play my surrogate mother and take pictures.

My Brooklyn launch brought folks from Iowa, Boston, Bushwick, and beyond, including some old high school acquaintances I hadn’t seen in ten years. An aspiring comedian–recently transplanted from Louisville, KY–even wrote a blog about it. Serendipity. Check it out here.

Also at the reading: a vicious lap dog, a blind date (successful, I think), and some delicious cheap brie.

All in all, success.

TUESDAY, 2/16: Launch at BookCourt, 7pm

163 Court St., Brooklyn

More information here and here

WEDNESDAY, 2/17, Center For Fiction, 6:30pm

17 E. 47th St.

Beatrice@TheCenter

Discussion with Jonathan Dee and Amy Greene, hosted by Ron Hogan

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.