Synopses & Reviews
The marriage of Gerhard and Suzannah Falktopf is already in trouble when tragedy strikes on the morning of September 11, 2001. As the quintessentially hip, downtown, art couple he a famous choreographer; she his muse, principal dancer, and now mother to their four-year-old son the strains in their marriage have been kept at bay by the glamorous velocity of their lives.
Though they themselves escape harm when the planes crash into the towers, husband and wife are suddenly cast into a unpredictable psychological space that allows their buried selves, and their sharp differences, to rise to the surface. Packing up the car, with their gorgeous young nanny in tow, they head for the safety of the Hamptons. But despite their seemingly soft landing in this cocoon of privilege, unleashed demons continue to push them to their psychic limits so much so that by the next morning they will hardly recognize each other.
Taking place over a manic twenty-four hours, A Day at the Beach gives us a fast-paced, razor-sharp story whose personal tragedy contains sparks of dark humor about American life pre- and post-9/11. It is a story that will speak to our memories of that day, and of how for all of us, and in so many different ways it meant the end of a world and the birth of something new. Or so it seemed....
Review
"Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11. Schulman's triumph here is that she breaks our hearts with three who lived." New York Times
Review
"Schulman juxtaposes the horror of 9/11 with the small details of everyday life, thereby giving this story a depth and realism that disturbingly recalls the events of the day while also transforming them into art. Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Impressive and effortless-looking...A Day At the Beach is a riveting story that captures the zeitgeist pitch-perfectly." Kurt Andersen, author of The Turn of the Century and Heyday and host of Studio 360
Review
"Schulman succeeds in creating an identifiable emotional landscape out of an incomprehensible tragedy." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[L]acks the depth and emotional power of other post-9/11 works." Booklist
About the Author
Helen Schulman is the author of the short story collection Not A Free Show, and the novels Out Of Time and The Revisionist. She is co-editor, along with Jill Bialosky, of the essay anthology Wanting A Child. Her non-fiction and fiction have appeared in such places, as Time, Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Style Section, BookForum, The VLS, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among others. She has been a Sundance Fellow, a New York Foundation for the Arts recipient and a Pushcart Prize winner. She has written several screenplays and has taught most recently in the MFA program at Columbia University and at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.