Dear Goldie Hawn, Dear Leonard Cohen

by Claudia Sternbach

After suffering a devastating loss, Claudia writes letters to family and friends, the famous and the infamous, as a means to explore the events in her own life and find meaning in human connections.

In this third memoir by Claudia Sternbach, she once again knits together fragments — this time using letters written to the likes of Goldie Hawn, Leonard Cohen, Vermeer, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and more — to shape a story of a woman attempting to make sense of the life she is living and those who have been a part of it — knowingly or not.

Her letters show us that we are all connected even by the thinnest of threads, that exploring those connections helps give shape and understanding to our past, and shines a light on what the future may hold.

In a time where emails are thought of as too time-consuming, and text messages seem to be our main way of communicating, Sternbach reminds us that the art of letter writing should not be tossed aside so quickly.

217 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 3, 2021

Reviews

[J. Dark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of ‘Dear Goldie Hawn, Dear Leonard Cohen’ by Claudia Sternbach

This book is a memoir, and yet more. It is at times a raw open wound, then happy memories centered around someone who had an impact in her life, and then a step into her own experiences from meeting someone or a reminiscence of someone who is gone, but definitely not forgotten.

The memoir is prefaced by Johannes Vermeer, or more properly ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’ painted by Vermeer. It is her encounters with this painting in different places that led in a way, to finding help after a particularly difficult time in her life. What follows from here is something that may have grown out of a bit of ‘homework’. What follows are letters of thanks to many people living, dead, famous, infamous, mysterious, and familiar. The stories couched in these letters of thanks bring back visions of ‘A Spoon River Anthology’, only more introspective in their intent.

These letters are both engaging and thought provoking. I have enjoyed reading them and do recommend this book for your perusal.

[Ainee Beland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this very short read and only found one tea mention and yet it was one of the most profound readings that I’d done in a very long time; too profound for me to understand it whole since it seems like chapters are missing because there’s no mention of Goldie Hawn or Leonard Cohen. Perhaps it is as if writing to them… but not since it is about the poem of Emily Dickinson. Also about the challenges of parenting to embrace what your child wants to do instead of howwwww-ling! Claudia chose to join her daughter on her adventures. She held her hand as she stretched on a table face down and had a sun/moon drama mask inked onto her lower back. And years later, they made an appointment with a tattoo artist so that each could acquire new ink. Her daughter has had many, but for Claudia, this was her first. So for her sixtieth birthday, Claudia took Ms. Emily to the East Village in New York City to explore and to have her with her in spirit at least and the rendering was a tattoo that read: Hope is the Thing!

[sanjukta das · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Rich Tapestry of a Life

It resonated with me although I am a woman in India. The personal pains, the familial bonds as well as the art, music, public figures and personal friends - this is life as we live it, sustained by so many around us.
An academic might say this is micro history or anthropology. It is. Yet so much more.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well crafted book. Different aspects of the author’s grief ( and sometimes gratitude) is expressed and touched upon through her letters to celebrities and family. It also feels like an acknowledgment of those who have (sometimes unknowingly) touched and impacted her life in a variety of ways.