Ann S. Epstein Writer

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Saving Face: A Memoir by Effy Redman (Rating 5) – Guilty Expressions. I couldn’t help but feel guilty each time my face expressed the emotions that overcame me as I read Saving Face: A Memoir by Effy Redman. Redman was born with a rare condition of facial paralysis called Moebius Syndrome. The disability affects her mouth, rendering it immobile, and eyelids, which she cannot fully close. So, whenever I smiled in response to her tender childhood memories, curled my lips in anger at those who teased her, or crinkled my eyes in gratitude at her mother’s unwavering support, I was acutely self-conscious that my face could show emotions that Redman’s disability makes impossible. She’s denied a form of communication we take for granted. Redman grew up not only hiding her feelings from others, but also from herself. Saving Face is a moving narrative of her struggle to find self-acceptance. More than that, it is her journey to find self-affirmation for her inner and outer beauty. Redman’s recollections brought to mind two classics of children’s literature. Her fascination at age ten with folding origami swans evoked memories of Hans Christian Anderson’s story “The Ugly Duckling,” a misfit waterfowl who grows up to be a beautiful swan. And I thought of E. B. White’s book, The Trumpet of the Swan, the story of a trumpeter swan born without a voice who overcomes his disability by learning to play a trumpet. Likewise, Redman finds creative ways to express herself, as a ballet dancer whose body moves with grace, and as a writer who communicates the feelings her mouth cannot. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I share with Redman the inner grin that comes when the “right” words magically appear on the page. By the end of the book, my guilt at taking my facial muscles for granted was replaced by admiration for Redman, who has opened herself to others and above all, to the possibilities within herself.

A courageous journey navigating disability

Why writers read: “Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?” – Annie Dillard

My Goodreads and Amazon review of The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez (Rating 5) – Pandemic Pals. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez is a pandemic novel in which the vulnerables are NOT those most likely to succumb to the virus, but physically and financially robust people who were isolated and alienated before the lockdown. The book focuses on three characters who share a sumptuous NYC apartment: a blocked middle-aged novelist (the unnamed narrator who is an undisguised stand-in for the author); a handsome and playful if not very talkative parrot, Eureka, for whom she house-sits; and a privileged college drop-out she calls “Vetch” who’s been kicked out by his parents and struggles with a history of mental illness. Plot-wise, nothing much happens, just as one would expect in an uncrowded space occupied by beings with no emotional connection to one another. In literary-speak, the stakes are low. And yet the unfolding non-drama is thoroughly absorbing. The narrator’s random memories and observations reflect a state of mind that so many of us experienced during the pandemic. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Nunez’s talent for capturing the interior life of a solitary character in such an active and interactive way. Like her, even after the extreme impact of COVID has passed, we’re still left wondering what it meant, how it will continue to dominate our self-worth and world view, and how vulnerable we all are to another major bout of disruption. Nunez offers no answers, but her book provides good company as we muddle through.

Ruminations on the inescapable impact of COVID lockdown

Why writers read: “A good book is an event in my life.” – Stendhal

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Jazzed by Jill Dearman (Rating 5) – Note Perfect. Awkward Wilhelmina (Will) is obsessed with social butterfly Dolly. Both girls are talented musicians, Will on clarinet, Dolly on piano. Dolly is turned on by jazz and crime; Will is turned on by jazz and Dolly. In a master-slave lesbian relationship, that occasionally turns the tables, Dolly blows hot and cold while Will boils with desire and freezes with the fear of desertion. To guarantee the erratic Dolly’s love, the compliant Will agrees to do anything, even murder a fourteen-year-old boy. Thus unfolds a gender-bending version of the scandalous 1924 Leopold and Loeb case. Dearman captures the Zeitgeist of the era — prohibition, antisemitism, social snobbery, homophobia, and the perceived threat of “Negro music.” The writing is itself a riff on jazz, at times syncopated and lively, at other times sustained and lugubrious. Like jazz artists, the protagonists trade solos, then meld their sounds. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire the fluidity with which Dearman shifts between styles as smoothly as a versatile musician. She takes us into the minds of her fully developed, complex characters, while also portraying their families’ social status, the legal system that traps them, and the medical establishment that purports to “treat” their sexual deviance. Jazzed is a note-perfect novel.

A gender-bending twist on an infamous crime story

Why writers read: “Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” – Malorie Blackman