2015: The Year of Reading Women discussion

Cynthia Bond

Cynthia is author of the powerful Ruby, a recent Oprah selection and nominee on the long list for Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel (2014).

Also a nominee for 2015 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. (http://www.pen.org/2015-pen-literary-...)



http://centerforfiction.org/awards/th...


I am currently reading this and am willing to engage in a discussion. A participant at a recent writing retreat introduced our small dinner group to the book. She herself is a poet -- and Bond uses some powerfully poetic and metaphoric language in this tough, tough book.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

A review of Ruby from The Guardian. Has a good photo of Ms. Bond. Explore the links as well.

I am reading/listening to this daemon haunted book, Ruby, and then wake this morning to encounter this review of the latest book by 85-year-old Harold Bloom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/boo...

"The Daemon Knows, the enigmatic title of Bloom’s newest work of oracular criticism, is strangely intransitive. What is it that the daemon knows? We are meant to understand that the daemon is an incarnation of an intuition beyond ordinary apperception, and that this knowing lies in the halo of feeling that glows out of the language of poetry. 'To ask the question concerning the daemon is to seek an origin of inspiration,' Bloom asserts, and his teacherly aim is to pose the question in close readings of 12 daemon-possessed writers whom he interrogates in pairs: ...."

If any books should come with "Trigger Warnings," Ruby might well be one of them. But I find the need for R-rating books rather startling. Aren't books both a means to deal with life and to decide what we needs must/should deal with in the world?

"Life doesn't come with trigger warnings. Why should books?" by Lori Horvitz

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisf...

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/O...

A conversation about the book and with the author here.

From this Goodreads reader review:

"...Reviewers say her work is reminiscent of Toni Morrison's. Well, if you've read Morrison's Paradise, perhaps you remember that the town was called Ruby, named after a woman mistreated. Ruby seems to be semi-symbolic. Yes, there were traces of The Bluest Eye, but I also saw traces of Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina and Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road."
--Cheryl

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...