Mari Mann's Blog

Marcel Proust by Nadar

“And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings, when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea…And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in the decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me, immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up li...

I’ll be running this giveaway for one week, from December 2nd to December 9th, 2014. The giveaway is for one signed copy of Stories from the Other World. To enter to win, leave a comment here, or on Facebook. Bonne chance!

Just in time for the Day of the Dead, my new book of short stories is out and ready to take you on a short trip to the Other World.

“Beyond” the rainbow is a world we are all familiar with in our Technicolor dreams. But when a little girl arrives on a flat, gray farm carrying tales of that place, the consequences are not quite as we dreamed them. “Carry Me Home” is set in a summer camp where carefree kids happily spend their days canoeing, swimming and riding horses. Matt Harper, age nine and...

Perhaps Proust got the idea that his one self was actually many selves because of the name his parents gave him: Marcel-Valentin-Louis-Eugene-Georges Proust.He was born on July 10th, 1871, in Auteuil, France, just outside of Paris and will live all of his life in Paris, with occasional vacations by the sea, until his death in 1922.His father (Adrien) was a doctor and his mother (Jeanne) was from a wealthy family, so Marcel will grow up knowing he’ll never have to really earn a sou.A brother,...

In my half century (plus three) of life, I have seen many ghosts. When I was a child they would appear beside my bed, with questioning looks on their faces, hands held out as if they were asking me for something. Later, after my maternal grandfather died, he also visited my bedside, I think just to say goodbye. He also spoke to me a few days after he died, as I was driving a little too fast; he said, “Slow down, Suzy”, calling me by the nickname he used for me when I was little. Years later,...

The Day of the Dead. The time when the veil between the worlds grows thin, and communication is possible between lost loved ones. And, sometimes, those that are not so loved can pierce the veil. Look. There’s a signpost up ahead. You are now entering….the other world.

Wheel of Fortune

(excerpt from Parisian by Heart)

It was dark at the bottom of the stairs and much colder than upstairs. Becky shivered, then turned towards Amanda and said, “I didn’t much care for you ordering me to stay upstairs,...

My thanks to everyone who commented on Marcel’s birthday post, or liked Parisian by Heart’s Facebook page (65 likes!), or who Twittered me. Also while I’m thanking everyone, I’d like to mention that it is exciting to me to see all the different countries around the world being represented by the folks liking and twittering and commenting (and buying, judging from my sales reports), Parisian by Heart. Apparently, my novel is traveling to India, Ireland, Hungary, Taiwan…and France, bien sur. Th...

Today, July 10, 2013, is the anniversary of Marcel Proust’s birthday; he would have been 142 years old, had he managed to hang on for this long. Not that he probably would have wanted to; in ill health since childhood, in pain and and frequently unable to breathe to the point where he thought he would suffocate to death, when he wrote the ending to his magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time, he told his companion Celeste, “Now I can die”. He was only 51 when he died in 1922, but today, we will c...

It seems that in this, the 100th year anniversary of the publication of Swann’s Way, you can hardly turn over a page without finding Marcel Proust hiding within it. And that’s not even counting the sightings found in the New Yorker magazine, every week, any year. I keep little sticky notes nearby when I am reading, so that whenever Marcel jumps out from a page, yelling “boo!” and laughing maniacally, I can write his name on the sticky note and slap it on the page, thereby quieting Marcel and...

Thank you to everyone who participated in my anniversary contest (http://marimann.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/in-search-of-lost-time-for-100-years/); for your comments on that post and your ‘likes’ on Facebook. You are all winners in my book, I wish I could give you all prizes, but alas, names must be tossed into the hat and winners chosen, so…..drum roll please!

The two winners of the two sets of postcards are: Dorothy Randall and inksterpop!

The winner of the set of postcards and the button is:...