Laurel's Guest Blog Posts

Writing The Four Seasons, I quickly realized how much of a challenge it was going to bring to life the sensual extravaganza that was Venice in the early eighteenth century. I think every writer comes up against the sobering fact that in our culture we shortchange our sensory experiences, so that we really can't, for example, describe with any great degree of specificity the way a rose smells or butter tastes. I am old enough to remember American Bandstand, where cute teenagers, when asked whether they liked a new record, would almost inevitably say they did, with no more explanation than "it has a good beat and I can dance to it." Novels based on paintings, such as those by Tracy Chevalier and Susan Vreeland, get a visual boost from their covers, but alas, there's no such help for the poor soul writing a novel about music.

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Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance (St. Martin's Press, 2008) tells of Jewish resistance efforts during the Nazi occupation of Vilna (Vilnius) Lithuania. The most obvious form of resistance was a small, armed underground movement that took hold in the ghetto, but other efforts involved almost every ghetto resident in one way or another. Maintaining hiding places for vulnerable residents, setting up schools and libraries to keep minds active and alive, and offering medical and social services to keep residents as healthy and well-fed as possible were also ways that Jews refused to give in to their oppressors.

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Page 69. I am squinting without my reading glasses, going back and forth until I have it. Wouldn't it be great if page 69 had "THIS'LL KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF!" written all over it? If it proved beyond a doubt that The Four Seasons was the must-read book of the season, or the year, or (dare I breathe?) forever and ever, amen?

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