Recensori in anteprimaBret Anthony Johnston

Reflections on a literary life pulled in two directions: from war zone journalism to the writing and teaching of fiction “Pritchard polishes the strange and makes it shine.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams at the San Francisco Chronicle “Heartfelt . . . bear[s] powerful witness to suffering, compassion, and transcendence.” —Kirkus Reviews “Gorgeous and moving. . . . Each of these essays confirms that to write is to think and feel, to take part in the profound and sacred act of witness. Read together—and the book is so arresting that many readers will finish it in a single sitting—the essays amount to a clear and irrefutable mandate for empathy.” —Bret Anthony Johnston, director of Creative Writing at Harvard University, author of Remember Me Like This, and editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (from the Foreword) In A Solemn Pleasure, Melissa Pritchard presents an undeniable case for both the power of language and the nurturing constancy of the writing life. This is nonfiction vividly engaged with the world, encompassing the author’s journeys into the deeply interior imaginative life required to write fiction, her search for the lost legacy of American literature as embodied by Walt Whitman, her reports from Afghanistan while embedded with a young female GI, her tales of travel with Ethiopian tribes, and the heartrending story of her informally adopted son William, a former Sudanese child slave. Through these fifteen magnificent essays, Pritchard shares her passion for writing and storytelling that educates, honors, and inspires.

Incisive, haunting, and beautifully written, Bret Anthony Johnston’s debut novel lays bare a family’s hope and heartbreak in the aftermath of a devastating crime. Remember Me Like This explores the nature of love and forgiveness when a kidnapped son is returned home. Advance praise for Remember Me Like This “It is as a writer that I admire the architecture of Remember Me Like This, the novel’s flawless storytelling. It is as the father of three sons that I vouch for the psychological authenticity of this depiction of any parent’s worst fears. Emotionally, I am with this family as they try to move ahead—embracing ‘the half-known and desperate history’ that they share. I love this novel.”—John Irving “In this deeply nuanced portrait of an American family, Bret Anthony Johnston fearlessly explores the truth behind a mythic happy ending. He presents an incisive dismantling of an all-too-comforting fallacy: that in being found we are no longer lost.”—Alice Sebold