A jeweler with a law degree, for decades Elaine Solari Atwood fought crippling arthritis with hard liquor until she died of a brain aneurysm at sixty-eight, leaving two daughters in their thirties and a lifetime's worth of unfinished business. Forced as a child to play nanny to five siblings, she grew up to become a mother who loved her girls as tenderly as her stifled pain and anger allowed. In THE SAPPHIRE AND THE TOOTH, award-winning author Ellis Avery, by way of telling the story of selling her mother's jewelry in New York's Diamond District, offers a searing portrait of alcoholism and difficult love. The first in a series of essays on grief, illness, and food entitled "The Family Tooth".
Ellis Avery writes from the depths of loss and fear with emotional precision and visceral sensuality. But it's her ability to attain a graceful, benevolent perspective on it all that makes these essays soar.
--Alison Bechdel
Ellis Avery uses her novelist's powers to tell the true story of her life in crisis. She faces her mother's death and her own near-death with an artist's intelligence and imagination--and humor. Reading these essays brings tears of grief and laughter.
--Maxine Hong Kingston
Ellis Avery captures the stillness and the drama of everyday life with elegance and poetry, never shying away from the struggles that make us human.
--Michelle Tea
About the Author: The only writer ever to have received the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Fiction twice, Ellis Avery is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a book of poetry. Her novels, THE LAST NUDE (Riverhead 2012) and THE TEAHOUSE FIRE (Riverhead 2006) have also received Lambda, Ohioana, and Golden Crown awards, and her work has been translated into six languages. Avery edits an urban observations column for Public Books, works one-on-one with writers as a manuscript consultant, and teaches fiction writing at Columbia University. www.ellisavery.com
Ellis Avery writes from the depths of loss and fear with emotional precision and visceral sensuality. But it's her ability to attain a graceful, benevolent perspective on it all that makes these essays soar.
--Alison Bechdel
Ellis Avery uses her novelist's powers to tell the true story of her life in crisis. She faces her mother's death and her own near-death with an artist's intelligence and imagination--and humor. Reading these essays brings tears of grief and laughter.
--Maxine Hong Kingston
Ellis Avery captures the stillness and the drama of everyday life with elegance and poetry, never shying away from the struggles that make us human.
--Michelle Tea
About the Author: The only writer ever to have received the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Fiction twice, Ellis Avery is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a book of poetry. Her novels, THE LAST NUDE (Riverhead 2012) and THE TEAHOUSE FIRE (Riverhead 2006) have also received Lambda, Ohioana, and Golden Crown awards, and her work has been translated into six languages. Avery edits an urban observations column for Public Books, works one-on-one with writers as a manuscript consultant, and teaches fiction writing at Columbia University. www.ellisavery.com
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