Betsy Robinson

Lucky Us is the story of a patchworked family: two sisters (by different mothers), their “blithe, inscrutable, crooked father,” and their various acquaintances who become new patchworked families — all manipulating and scheming their way through the 1940s US of A.

This is voluptuous American writing. Like the family, the story is patchworked — the pieces, not necessarily linear, but when put together, they tell a more perfect story than tales that are forced into a tight chronological narrative. Events are revealed through a simultaneous tide-in and undertow-out flow of action and letters from the future; the writing voice changes from third person to various different first persons and yet it is never confusing. Why? Because Amy Bloom writes at the pleasure of a muse that is uniquely her own — a truly authentic and organic voice and structure. Bloom’s voice and structure are so naturally honest that they seem easy. But I’ve read writers who I’ve suspected have tried to copy her, and, in their copycat hands, you realize this level of honesty is anything but easy. Amy Bloom copies no one. She writes at the pleasure of her Original Voice. And so few writers find, let alone express themselves in or from their original voices that it seems rare. Maybe that’s just the way it is. An Original Voice is treasure. This book is treasure. Read More 

This book is magnificent. Susan Jane Gilman is a master story weaver with perfect pitch—for dialogue, narrative, curlicued paradoxical human responses, and everything that contributes to a literary symphony.

The time structure of this book is inspired—weaving from both the past, forward and the future, back to finally sync up in a central present.

The story of the evolution of Russian Jewish immigrant child Malka Treynovsky into a Jewish Italian American Marie Antoinette/Leona Helmsley/Martha Stewart/Joan Rivers ice cream diva named Lillian Dunkle is both an only-in-the-USA story and a transcendently human tour-de-force of hurt, humiliation,  Read More 

May has Mother’s Day. June has Father’s. But when do we celebrate Sucky Parents? Certainly they exist so they deserve a month too. How about July?

No matter how crummy or contentious or annoying parents are, most people will still wish them a happy Mother’s or Father’s Day, and many of these children feel dishonest. And the ones who don’t want to lie keep quiet. After all, it is our overwhelming cultural belief that it is normal and healthy to make a family or long for one, and if you don’t, at least join a corporation or street gang. And since our parents did that, we should either lie or keep silent about their suckiness.

Since I have never fallen into the idealizing or family-making/longing or silent categories, I protest. And this year, after reading the four hundredth Facebook post lauding a great or badly missed dead parent on the appropriate national holiday, I had an epiphany: For a more authentic expression of our entire culture, we need a Sucky Parents Day—a day for all the people with abysmal mothers and/or fathers to say “Thank you, Pop. Thanks, Ma. Even though you clearly had no business or talent for raising kids, I’m grateful that you had me because otherwise I wouldn’t be here, which let me tell you, has not been easy, since I grew up feral due to a parenting style referred to as ‘natural growth’ by Malcolm Gladwell in his ground-breaking book about why, despite my near-genius IQ, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing most of the time.” And If you are a Sucky Parent, you will now have an appropriate holiday to tell your kids how sorry you are that you didn’t know what you were doing, and it’s a crying shame you were drunk so much of the time, but hey, what do they want, you had Sucky Parents too. (I use initial S P caps to subliminally convey the importance of this unserved population.) Read More