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Powell's Q&A, Q&A | December 10, 2009

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Describe your latest book/project/work. I've been studying the life and work of photographer W. Eugene Smith for 13 years. My first book (Dream... Continue »
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    The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965

    Sam Stephenson and W. Eugene Smith
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Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir

by Laura Flynn

Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir Cover

ISBN13: 9781582434612
ISBN10: 1582434611
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

When Laura Flynn was a little girl, her beautiful, dynamic mother, Sally, was the center of her imagination. It wasn’t long, however, before Sally’s fun-loving side slowly and methodically became absorbed by madness. As Laura’s parents divorced and her father struggled to gain custody, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest while Laura and her sisters united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother taught them so that they might deflect the danger threatening their fragile family.

Set in 1970s San Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is redolent with place. In luminous prose, this memoir paints a most intimate portrait of what might have been a catastrophic childhood had Laura and her sisters not been resilient and determined enough to survive their environment even as they yearned to escape it.

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Sawadee Reader, April 5, 2009 (view all comments by Sawadee Reader)
Lovely, lyrical, and haunting. Laura and her sisters create an imaginary world when their mother slips into schizophrenia. The horrors of the present (a mother who lights fires and fights demons) is contrasted with what could have been. Swallow the Ocean chronicles the end of a charmed marriage and a bitter legal battle over who gets to raise the children. The story is written with tremendous compassion. The only villain is a mysterious disease. When an adult Laura and her sister Sara visit their mother with Sara's children, Laura writes: "My niece and nephew knew she was not quite right. They chatted her up anyway, telling her about dolphins and dinosaurs, about art projects at school. They're troopers, not least because Sara is exactly the kind of mother my mother was when we were small." And in that poignant sentence, we see all that was lost.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781582434612
Subtitle:
A Memoir
Author:
Flynn, Laura
Author:
Flynn, Laura M.
Publisher:
Counterpoint LLC
Subject:
BIO026000
Subject:
Personal Memoirs
Copyright:
2008
Publication Date:
February 2009
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
285
Dimensions:
8.24x5.50x.88 in. .80 lbs.
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