Deborah Shapiro - "Consolation" - Amanda Goldblatt
Photograph by Beth Rooney
Deborah Shapiro will discuss her book Consolation. She will be joined in conversation by Amanda Goldblatt.
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This event will be held in person at the Seminary Co-op. At this time, masks are required while in the store and strongly encouraged at outdoor events.
About the book: Consolation is a short novel that focuses on what happens when a celebrated photographer is killed in a car accident and three women whose lives overlapped with his are left to reckon with his absence. As these women, each of a different generation, navigate the emotional landscape of grief, they question how their lives have unfolded and how this loss might change their paths going forward. With empathy and humor, Consolation explores the connections and echoes that exist among these women as it delves into the complexities of modern life—the inauthenticity prompted in us all by social media; the gaps created by gender, age, and class that we’re forever trying to fill; and our collective struggle to balance the choices available to us in ways that will not foreclose either happiness or fulfillment. Whose losses do we deem valuable and whose work and ambitions are given room to grow? What happens when the footnotes become the story?
About the author: Deborah Shapiro is the author of the novels The Sun In Your Eyes (a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice), The Summer Demands, and Consolation. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Sight Unseen, Chicago Magazine, Literary Hub, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.
About the Interlocutor: Amanda Goldblatt’s fiction and essays can be found at Guernica, Chicago Review, Fence, and elsewhere. She was a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and has worked with writers as a contingent instructor at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University, StoryStudio Chicago, and Northeastern Illinois University. Her debut novel is Hard Mouth. Find out more on twitter: @amandagoldblatt and instagram: @aegagegage.
Related Titles
Consolation is a novel that asks big questions but won’t hit you over the head with easy answers. It attentively focuses on what happens when a celebrated photojournalist is killed in a car accident and three women whose lives overlapped with his are left to reckon with his absence. As these women, each of a different generation, navigate the emotional landscape of grief, they question how their lives have unfolded and how this loss might change their paths going forward. With empathy and humor, Consolation explores the connections and echoes that exist among these women as it looks at those ambiguous yet affecting relationships we never quite know how to define. And it delves into the complexities of modern life—the inauthenticity prompted in us all by social media; the gaps created by gender, age, and class that we’re forever trying to fill; and our collective struggle to balance the choices available to us in ways that will not foreclose either happiness or fulfillment. Whose losses do we deem valuable and whose work and ambitions are given room to grow? What happens when the footnotes become the story?