Read This Book

Book critics have ethics. I review for The Boston Globe, People and Dame Magazine, and I never review anyone I know, or anyone who is a relative of a friend, or even anyone who shares my editor or my agent. You've got to be pure here! To be critical, you can't let your feelings about how someone really is a great cook or a good friend who loaned you money when you most needed it or held your hand during a horrific crisis get in the way of how you look at a book.

However, this is my blog, and with full disclosure, I really want to talk about the books of people I know. This one, Broken Colors, is by Michele Zackheim, who just happens to be the sister of my friend Victoria Zackheim, who edited the Today Show favorite anthology THE OTHER WOMAN and the upcoming FOR KEEPS (I have an essay in that one, too, though it's a reprint from a Salon piece I did.)

Library Journal calls Broken Colors "comic and wise," and Booklist says it's absolutely haunting. Vanessa Redgrave (!!!!) loved it. I say it's a strong, mesmerizing portrait of what it means to be an artist (and that includes being the artist of your own life), what it costs to confront the past and what it takes to recast your future. Truly, it's a great read--and it has the most amazingly beautiful, light-dappled cover I have ever seen.