Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Story left me confused
Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart

Eleanor Cahn is the protagonist in Jill Bialosky's second novel, The Life Room. Full-time literature professor, married and mother to two boys, Eleanor is about to take the trip of a lifetime....she is presenting a paper on Anna Karenina at a conference in Paris. She's torn about going. Eleanor feels what many women feel: torn and guilty for caring as deeply about her work (as a literature professor) as she does her husband and children. The novel opens with a bang and sets the stage for a modern dilemma.

Then I got to page 16 and the beginning of Chapter 4. Ignited by a call from her mother that her childhood friend and probably first love, Stephen, will also be in Paris, begins an excruciatingly long flashback that tediously accounts recounts the men in Eleanor's life. First there is Stephen; then her high school sweetheart, William; followed by her college affair with the married painter, Adam. It is Adam who introduces her to "the life room," but the concept is so esoteric that I could never firmly grasp what "the life room" was. The previews claimed there was a lot of eroticism in this work, but I found it woefully short.

Eleanor loves Paris, visiting the museums, presenting her paper (which she is then asked to turn into a book), discussing literature with colleagues (all whom seem American, which I found as rather odd). Still she is happy to come home and take up life where she left off.

Somehow, someway, Stephen shows up and begins to appear in different aspects of her life. Then there is more angst about why he is in her life filled in by flashbacks with William, but mostly Adam, and returned to present time with emails to one of her male colleagues she met in Paris.

Confused? Me too. I think the reader was supposed to feel the pull of work and home, past and present. More important I think the reader is supposed to feel that he/she too can feel both repulsed and raptured by the opposite sex when married. Eleanor seems fascinated with every man in her life but her husband.

Other than the hints that Stephen is a firebug, The Life Room has little going for it.

Armchair Interviews says: Heed this reviewer's advice.

enchanting
The Life Room is a captivating read. The text is thoughtfully and beautifully written, bringing the novel's main character to life in the readers mind where she will stay long after the book is closed.

(3.5) "Were we all, we who lived deeply, doomed?"


With Tolstoy's tortured Anna Karenina as subtext, literature professor Eleanor Cahn leaves her beloved family in New York for a ten day conference in Paris where she has been asked to give a paper. Conflicted about the trip, Eleanor grants herself permission to indulge in the professional aspect of her life, forever at war with the more traditional wife/mother role, creating a stable family unit that was missing in her own childhood. While sorting through the pros and cons of a decision to embrace her identity as a serious scholar (mostly pro), Eleanor reflects upon the early years of a childhood defined by the adoration of a flawed father who cannot escape his history, the annihilation of his Jewish family. Rather than drag wife and daughter into the complicated morass of his mind, Eleanor's father chooses to leave a devastated, still-devoted wife and loving daughter to pursue oblivion in drink and younger women.

Their home a veritable shrine to what might have been, Eleanor's mother endures migraines while a growing daughter seeks respite in the arms of lovers, from her first crush to an arrogant artist, settling finally for the security of heart surgeon Michael. That Eleanor has one blue eye and one green further illustrates the dichotomy of her existence, the internal war of appearance vs. reality, her husband unaware (and perhaps incurious) of the deep emotions that have so far failed to surface in the marriage. But Paris releases both memory and a yearning to delve once more into the explosive passions that surge beneath Eleanor's academic façade.

In Paris, Eleanor and her colleagues become individuals separate from their identities, temporarily unmoored from family ties and obligations, most evident in the journal Eleanor keeps while in that evocative city. Her bifurcated life revealed through the diary, Eleanor probes carefully hidden secrets, the power of memory exacerbated by a meeting with her first crush, Stephen Mason, the elusive former neighbor who slipped out of her life before Eleanor could determine the extent of her feelings. Stephen is the link, an early unfulfilled sexual awakening, the first male to fill the vacuum left by an errant father. Although Stephen clearly has a private agenda, he is a serious threat to Eleanor's hard-won security. The author thoroughly explores Eleanor's romances with flawed men who are either unavailable or unable to commit, loading the dice in favor of the sanctioned Michael. Without subtlety, Freud runs screaming from the room.

Bialosky's prose is riddled with angst. Are the demands of family more important than one's personal quest for fulfillment? Is the interior life a valid pursuit? Is the past more seductive than the present? Undoubtedly. Familiar questions, but in this case artfully imbued with the parallel of Karenina's great tragedy. Made more personal in the particulars of Eleanor's conflict, this modern woman, as both Madonna and lover, mother and wanton, is caught in a frantic dance on the head of a pin until she literally falls, exhausted into expectations. Luan Gaines/2007.


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Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Jill Bialosky, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1268 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
Jill Bialosky follows her acclaimed debut collection, The End of Desire, with this powerful sequence of poems that probes the subterranean depths of eros. Gerald Stern has called Bialosky “the poet of the secret garden, the place, at once, of grace and sadness,” and here she enters that garden again, blending the classical with the contemporary in bold considerations of desire, fertility, virginity, and childbirth. Written against the idealizations of romantic love and motherhood, she tells of the loss of one child and the birth of another, the fierce passions of life before children, the seductions of suicide, and the comforts of art. Throughout, she braids and unbraids the distinct yet often inseparable themes of motherhood, love, and sexuality. “When he comes to me,” she writes,

half-filled glass
in his hand, wanting
me to touch him, I hear
you stir in your crib. I know what your body      
  feels like.
The soft skin of a flower, not bruised, not yet
  in torment . . .

Subterranean is the moving and intimate account of the emergence of a female psyche. Like the figures of Persephone and Demeter, who appear in various forms in these poems, Bialosky finds a strange beauty in grief, and emerges from the realms of temptation with insight and distinction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Perpetuation of the Subliminal
There are many emotions and strategies present in Jill Bialosky's Subterranean. The work is very careful, full of presence and reality, and pays great attention to the perpetuation of the subliminal.
I think it very important that we as readers remember not to just read a title but to consider it part of the poem and of the work as a whole. Begin with the title of the work: subterranean. The definition can simply mean "underneath the Earth's surface". However, there is a definition that seems to be much more suited to Bialosky's work: "lying beneath what is revealed or avowed, especially being deliberately concealed". There is this ever-growing need throughout the book to uncover the hidden aspects of our lives. It begins with the first poem, aptly named "Subterranean". We are continually presented with poems that force discovery and want for birth, for renewal.
I had an endless feeling of pulling, of something beneath the words, that there was a force within each poem begging to be discovered. This wonderful intensity pulls the reader through the work, forcefully. You want to read, want to find the cause...you want to know what's underneath the surface. There's a pulsing in this book, a quickening of language, followed by languid urgency, and then a punctuation of thought; a rise and fall, push and pull of poetic and emotional elements.
Bialosky's voice is one that is fresh and unique. Her use of the short-line style brings such poignancy and subtle impact to her work while her languid long line poems present in the latter half of Subterranean exhibit her simple, yet brilliant use of language. The connectedness of her imagery never ceases to form beautiful scenes that help in the smooth presentation of intense emotion.
I would recommend Jill Bialosky's latest book to anyone yearning for a fresh voice with a unique and versatile style. Chilling, provocative, resonant, Subterranean is an experience for any reader eager for a taste of unique poetic storytelling. ... Read more

Book Description

Term paper due tomorrow? Need to cram for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Poetry for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by Thomson Gale--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: author biography; poem summary; poem text (if available); discussion of the work's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Poetry for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: Thomson Gale--and "Poetry for Students."Download Description

Term paper due tomorrow? Need to bone up for a test? Or just looking for the best information about a favorite literary work?

Turn to "Poetry for Students" to get your research done in record time. Brought to you by the Gale Group--the world's leading source of literary criticism and analysis--this e-doc contains: author biography; poem summary; poem text (if available); discussion of the work's themes, style, and historical context; a compendium of in-depth critical material; study questions; suggestions for further reading; and much more.

Why choose "Poetry for Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: The Gale Group--and "Poetry for Students." ... Read more

Amazon.com
In The End of Desire, autobiography coalesces into art. In herfirst collection, Jill Bialosky is intent on the before and after as she, her mother, and her sisters struggle with the death of her father. The opening sequence, "The House," is a delicate narrative of secrets and loss. In one poem, the two younger girls take turns burying each other under leaves in a game called father. Meanwhile, their mother resorts at first to men, later to alcohol and isolation. As her children are in the yard, building "fathers out of snow," she is abandoned indoors, increasingly unreal.

We left her alone for hours,
our skin raw,
holding white like warmth in our hands.
She was almost invisible
in the icy air.

Customer Reviews (11)

Worthwhile.
Jill Bialosky, The End of Desire (Knopf, 2001)

I've been waiting for this book for a while. You see, back in autumn or thereabouts, I was planning out a review for a book (Stephen Tapscott's Another Body) that I was going to use to delineate the difference between a good poet and a great one. It was going along swimmingly until Tapscott got great in one section of the book, so I shelved those ideas until I found a book that would fit them. The End of Desire, as it turns out, is that book.

Every once in a while, a poet just doesn't know when to stop a poem. A poem is not a research paper, intro-paragraph-paragraph-paragraph-summary. We're supposed to come up with the summary (and, in some extreme cases, the paragraphs) on our own. One of the things that separates poetry from prose is that poetry should make the reader work for it. That's why I'm invariably disappointed in poems that end with couplets like "That's how I learned I had no power/to stop her nature from murdering beauty." (from "My Mother Was a Lover of Flowers"); is there anything being said there that we wouldn't be able to get from the poem, having read it? Would the cutting out of those two lines take anything away from the poem? You haven't read the whole thing-- I don't think so, anyway-- so I'll tell you the answer: no. That's what the poet has spent the last twenty-six lines showing us. There's a reason "show, don't tell" is such a chestnut in writing workshops. We writers are a lazy lot; why should we have to do the work when we can get the readers to do it for us?

I don't mean this to sound overly negative, though obviously I've just spent a paragraph harping on the book's biggest failing in a review that will be, at most, four paragraphs. The fact is that when Jill Bialosky isn't treating poems like term papers, she's quite good at this poetry business. The book opens with a ten-page piece called "Fathers in the Snow", and the first section of that piece is just about everything a fantastic poem should be.

"The game is called father.

My sister lies in the grass.
I take handfuls of leaves
we raked from the lawn
spilling them over her body

until she's buried--

her red jacket lost, completely.
Then it's my turn.

Afterwards, we pick the brittle pieces
from each other's hair."

There are a few minor nits to pick with it, I think, but they're more matters of opinion than anything else (though some writers, those who live by "the adverb is not your friend" as solidly as I used to, would beg to differ with me, I'm sure); the base of it is as solid as they come. Bialosky doesn't give too much away, but gives us enough to figure out what she's on about, even without reading the other nine sections of the poem.

It's a first book, and thus some of the stuff that drags it down is probably excusable through that old "lack of experience" gorilla that likes to wander around the room plucking the hats off the audience members. The good parts of this book, and there are many, make the bad parts worth bearing. ***

This book is the essance of so many feelings women have!
This book is wonderfully written.Her style of poetry is breath taking.When I read through this book I found pieces of myself in her words.She has been able to write more of what I feel then I have ever been able too.This is one of the best books I have ever read and would recomend it to anyone who feels a love for poetry.

The End of Desire: Poems
With shocking simplicity Jill Bialosky presents intense moments of herlife, illuminating the milestones of childhood, adolescence, sexuality andgrief. See has a novelist's ability to make us want to read on, as well asthe poet's ability to condense feeling. Her poems give the pleasure ofsharing someone else's story while almost always touching our own lives. Inaddition, there is delight in the details of her images.

The Star Points of Exposure
"The End of Desire is chilling, deep down, riviting, and wide open. Jill Bialosky's account of an innocence ripened before its time. Enough to make one warm and cold at the same time. Crawl under the covers, because itis an experience of exposure, brave and raw. Left wide open for thevultures/ I too greedily lapped up her words. Licking at my own wounds,tasting salt, and laughing like tears. The wailing inside knocking againstthe ribs. The chest moving up and down, something caught in the throat.Once funny or innocent. Now wet, and warm trickling down the cheeks as ifblood itself. A river. The insides turned out/ this is the beauty ofBialosky's mirror. Poetry reflecting like a pond. Light on top, yet deepdown knowing there are dark and murky waters. Muck for between your toes,and slimy fronds to wrap strongly around your ankles. The unknown. AT onepoint Bialosky reveils, "Why do you worry so, when none of us isspared?" (p 72, The Goddess of Despair). Her poetry like the dirtydishes no one else bothered to notice. The embarrasing stain of adolescentmentruation. Like looking in the mirror, and realizing the falsity, thegame. A fleeting glimpse of something shiny, happy. The taste of lemontaffy/ or a familiar cracked doll with faded paint smile. The memory of awarm palm against your face, and the billowy curtains which shimmer in thedistance. Their thoughts linger there. Savoring the attic of the soul. Apause between breath as pain tills transformation. Life and death theswinging of an old screen door on the back porch of memory. Bravo!

Praise for Bialosky's End of Desire
Bialosky discusses with refreshing simplicity subjects that centuries of poets have anguished over.The terror of death, the sometimes unhappy progression of relationshipsand the despair of being childless are allsubjects that have the danger of becoming cliche once in poem form. Bialosky's poems, however, are so personal and specific that even the ageold lamenting of despair seems like a fresh subject.We, as readers, havemade a quasi journey through the life of a woman who has struggled tounderstand the unpredictable nature of life. ... Read more

Amazon.com
This unique anthology features stories about an appetite as raw as any for sex or chocolate. It's about the sharp biological and emotional hunger for children: "A craving," writes contributor Rita Gabis, "hammered out of the bones of things, of winter, frozen groundwater, the sudden naked appearance of spring." In essays and short stories commissioned and republished from magazines such as Harper's and The New Yorker, authors including Kevin Canty and Lisa Shea write eloquently of the quest for children, of its derailments and its delights. Surprisingly often they tell of the pain endured in the search for a child of one's own. Lynn Lauber offers a heartbreaking piece on giving a daughter up for adoption at age 16, and finding her again as an adult. Bob Shacochis describes a grueling trip through the world of fertility treatments. "Between I'm not dead and I'm alive, the lesson to learn is fearless love," writes Jenifer Levin. "It isn't easy."

If there is one weakness in this collection, it is that it tells almost exclusively the stories of middle-class, middle-aged America--stories of remarkable privilege in which getting a child can involve months away from work, international travel, and expensive medical consultation.Nevertheless, Wanting a Child offers some dazzling writing and an often remarkable, openhearted honesty about parenthood that make it well worth reading. "Never have I felt such triumphs and inadequacies, such pleasure or such sorrow," writes Shea of her leap into single motherhood. "...And never have I relished so thoroughly the existence of another person in my life." --Maria DolanBook Description
Twenty-two writers-from Tama Janowitz and Peter Carey to Amy Hempel and Bob Shacochis-share their complicated journeys to parenthood, whether they involve surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, or adoption. Included are inspiring accounts of families that defy the traditional definition, from homes with same-sex partners to those with single parents or stepparents. The first book of its kind, Wanting a Child finally gives voice to the heartbreak, hope, and elation experienced by the many who discover that parenthood cannot be taken for granted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

We're not alone!
So often during the seven+ months that my husband and I have been actively trying to have a baby, we have felt very alone.Like the rest of the world has not a trouble in the world getting pregnant, and we're the oddballs who can't manage it with him looking at me cross-eyed.

But this book was so wonderful, if only because it reminded us that we are NOT alone.There are MANY people in the world who are in our situation, or in more dire situations than ours.Sometimes it helps just knowing that we're not the only ones.

Don't read this if you're pregnant!!
I am 4 months pregnant and got this book as a gift.I'm not sure if the person who bought it for me realized what it was about.As an expectant mom reading stories of the troubles people had conceiving and carrying children, it made me depressed and anxious - what if my child has Down's syndrome, what if it's stillborn, etc.So, if you have had trouble conceiving, by all means, this book is great support.I believe people need to "bond" with others who share similar trials and tribulations.But if you are not, and are easily spooked, I'd suggest picking up something more light-hearted and happy.

Beautiful, complex writing about wanting children
I always find people's stories about their infertility and fertility to be very moving. Stories about children and parents are always the most heartbreaking. But in the hands accomplished writers like the 22 in this90%-nonfiction anthology, the subject is very nearly devastating in itssadness, joy, and beauty.

I traded most of my own writing time fortime with my own long-sought-after children, and reading these writers mademe feel, really for the first time, the pain of what I gave up to be afather! Writing, too, can be so wonderful!

WANTING A CHILD is nota breezy read because the writing generally is complex, though always quiteclear. And there are maybe two duds. But overall, it is justmagnificent.

Inspirational.
I found this to be an excellent book.My husband and I are coping with secondary infertility.The real-life trials and tribulations of the people in this book gave me some new found hope to continue my journey.Thewriters of each of the individual cases did an excellent job of depictingtheir quest for parenthood. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (16)

One of my favorites
Being a teenage girl, I identify with most novels that have young narrators.The plot may seem predictable, but it is an awesome book.Nicely written, it definitely held my attention.Throughout it, I kind of knew her boyfriend was using her, but the ending was still tragic for me. I also recommend Prep, another great teenage novel.

A Powerful Little Book...
This was a captivating read. One that was very difficult to put down. It's the story of love, loss, and abandonment, told through the voice of Anna Crane. The story is told in a series of flashbacks, some when she's a child, others when she's a teenager, and finally when she's an adult.

Anna and her two sisters live with their lost mother Lilly in Ohio. Their father was killed when they were very young and Lilly hasn't been the same since. She's very recluse, and quite, hardly ever leaving the house and only spending time with her three girls. Then one day she decides things need to change. She begins dating, and for the next three years a steady stream of men are in and out of their home.

The girls (still only children) are not happy about this new arrangement, and begin to lose respect for their mother. Years go by, along with a new step-father, and Lilly seems only to be sinking deeper and deeper into herself. The girls at this point don't know what to do with her. Ruthie, the oldest, leaves to live with their aunt, and Anna, and Louise (the youngest) are left alone with her. Meanwhile Anna is struggling with her own demons in a very unhealthy teenage romance with her boyfriend Austin.

The story closes with her mother committing the ultimate betrayal against Anna, and her battle with herself to forgive, and look at her mother for who she is, a lost soul, floating from one day to the next never real aware of her actions. I definitely recommend this book. It's an enchanting look at what tragedy, death, and loneliness can to do the human spirit. I'll most certainly be keeping an eye out for more from this talented author.

Cruel mother
Lilly is the epitome of a damaged woman whose actions are cruel and who is not even aware of the sorrow she inflicts on her daughters. I read this in a fit of absorption- I just had to know what would happen to Anna and her sisters.Lilly is utterly fascinating and maddening at once.The author is genius at writing about a time and place, with fantastic details.i do think she writes very self-consciously, inhyper poetic prose.I still think this novel is a treasure.

Prose that's proud of itself
It's taken me a while to get through this book partly because I'm not very excited about the plot and partly because the author's self-conscious writing style really annoys me. There are lovely phrases here and there, but there are plenty of others that read like something you'd find in a greeting card--they try hard to impress and fail. The author makes deliberate, almost constant use of foreshadowing, perhaps in an attempt to get the reader to stick with the book and not lay it down for good. I'm contemplating the latter.

Stunning and Tragic
I finished reading this book several weeks ago and I find that it still haunts me.I loved it and could completely identify with Anna.There is nothing more horrible than the "ultimate" betrayal.The betrayal of one's own mother.

For those readers who did not give the book favorable reviews because of the editing and grammar....get a life and learn to enjoy things just for the entertainment.It is too bad that you live in a world that is not perfect. You must be exhausted from correcting everything around you! ... Read more

Book Description