Bialosky, Jill

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We're not alone!
Don't read this if you're pregnant!!
Beautiful, complex writing about wanting children
Inspirational.

Wanting a Child

Manufacturer: Farrar Straus & Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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philosophy hope in a jar daily moisturizer

ASIN: 0374525943

Amazon.com

This unique anthology features stories about an appetite as raw as any for sex or chocolate. It's about the sharp biological and emotional hunger for children: "A craving," writes contributor Rita Gabis, "hammered out of the bones of things, of winter, frozen groundwater, the sudden naked appearance of spring." In essays and short stories commissioned and republished from magazines such as Harper's and The New Yorker, authors including Kevin Canty and Lisa Shea write eloquently of the quest for children, of its derailments and its delights. Surprisingly often they tell of the pain endured in the search for a child of one's own. Lynn Lauber offers a heartbreaking piece on giving a daughter up for adoption at age 16, and finding her again as an adult. Bob Shacochis describes a grueling trip through the world of fertility treatments. "Between I'm not dead and I'm alive, the lesson to learn is fearless love," writes Jenifer Levin. "It isn't easy."

If there is one weakness in this collection, it is that it tells almost exclusively the stories of middle-class, middle-aged America--stories of remarkable privilege in which getting a child can involve months away from work, international travel, and expensive medical consultation. Nevertheless, Wanting a Child offers some dazzling writing and an often remarkable, openhearted honesty about parenthood that make it well worth reading. "Never have I felt such triumphs and inadequacies, such pleasure or such sorrow," writes Shea of her leap into single motherhood. "...And never have I relished so thoroughly the existence of another person in my life." --Maria Dolan

Book Description

Twenty-two writers-from Tama Janowitz and Peter Carey to Amy Hempel and Bob Shacochis-share their complicated journeys to parenthood, whether they involve surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, or adoption. Included are inspiring accounts of families that defy the traditional definition, from homes with same-sex partners to those with single parents or stepparents. The first book of its kind, Wanting a Child finally gives voice to the heartbreak, hope, and elation experienced by the many who discover that parenthood cannot be taken for granted.

Customer Reviews:

We're not alone!.......2003-01-28

So often during the seven+ months that my husband and I have been actively trying to have a baby, we have felt very alone. Like the rest of the world has not a trouble in the world getting pregnant, and we're the oddballs who can't manage it with him looking at me cross-eyed.

But this book was so wonderful, if only because it reminded us that we are NOT alone. There are MANY people in the world who are in our situation, or in more dire situations than ours. Sometimes it helps just knowing that we're not the only ones.

Don't read this if you're pregnant!!.......2002-07-15

I am 4 months pregnant and got this book as a gift. I'm not sure if the person who bought it for me realized what it was about. As an expectant mom reading stories of the troubles people had conceiving and carrying children, it made me depressed and anxious - what if my child has Down's syndrome, what if it's stillborn, etc. So, if you have had trouble conceiving, by all means, this book is great support. I believe people need to "bond" with others who share similar trials and tribulations. But if you are not, and are easily spooked, I'd suggest picking up something more light-hearted and happy.

Beautiful, complex writing about wanting children.......1999-02-12

I always find people's stories about their infertility and fertility to be very moving. Stories about children and parents are always the most heartbreaking. But in the hands accomplished writers like the 22 in this 90%-nonfiction anthology, the subject is very nearly devastating in its sadness, joy, and beauty.

I traded most of my own writing time for time with my own long-sought-after children, and reading these writers made me feel, really for the first time, the pain of what I gave up to be a father! Writing, too, can be so wonderful!

WANTING A CHILD is not a breezy read because the writing generally is complex, though always quite clear. And there are maybe two duds. But overall, it is just magnificent.

Inspirational........1999-01-14

I found this to be an excellent book. My husband and I are coping with secondary infertility. The real-life trials and tribulations of the people in this book gave me some new found hope to continue my journey. The writers of each of the individual cases did an excellent job of depicting their quest for parenthood.

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One of my favorites
A Powerful Little Book...
Cruel mother
Prose that's proud of itself
Stunning and Tragic

House Under Snow (Harvest Book)
Jill Bialosky
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel

ASIN: 0156027461

Book Description

This first novel by a celebrated American poet is a story of mothers and daughters, of sexual identity, and of a family disintegrating after the premature death of its patriarch. Anna Crane, soon to be married, reflects on her childhood in Ohio during the 1960s and '70s with her two sisters and Lilly, her charismatic, self-destructing mother. Lilly is consumed by memories of her late husband and spends her days dreamily creating paper menageries or preparing for dates with a stream of suitors. Evoking the claustrophobia of small-town life, the novel races toward a chilling conclusion when Anna is betrayed by the two most important figures in her young life.
Not since Alice McDermott's That Night has there been such a telling portrait of first love. And not since Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here have we witnessed the destructive, seductive nature of a mother who insists on competing with her children.

Customer Reviews:

One of my favorites.......2006-01-26

Being a teenage girl, I identify with most novels that have young narrators. The plot may seem predictable, but it is an awesome book. Nicely written, it definitely held my attention. Throughout it, I kind of knew her boyfriend was using her, but the ending was still tragic for me. I also recommend Prep, another great teenage novel.

A Powerful Little Book..........2005-09-04

This was a captivating read. One that was very difficult to put down. It's the story of love, loss, and abandonment, told through the voice of Anna Crane. The story is told in a series of flashbacks, some when she's a child, others when she's a teenager, and finally when she's an adult.

Anna and her two sisters live with their lost mother Lilly in Ohio. Their father was killed when they were very young and Lilly hasn't been the same since. She's very recluse, and quite, hardly ever leaving the house and only spending time with her three girls. Then one day she decides things need to change. She begins dating, and for the next three years a steady stream of men are in and out of their home.

The girls (still only children) are not happy about this new arrangement, and begin to lose respect for their mother. Years go by, along with a new step-father, and Lilly seems only to be sinking deeper and deeper into herself. The girls at this point don't know what to do with her. Ruthie, the oldest, leaves to live with their aunt, and Anna, and Louise (the youngest) are left alone with her. Meanwhile Anna is struggling with her own demons in a very unhealthy teenage romance with her boyfriend Austin.

The story closes with her mother committing the ultimate betrayal against Anna, and her battle with herself to forgive, and look at her mother for who she is, a lost soul, floating from one day to the next never real aware of her actions. I definitely recommend this book. It's an enchanting look at what tragedy, death, and loneliness can to do the human spirit. I'll most certainly be keeping an eye out for more from this talented author.

Cruel mother.......2004-03-19

Lilly is the epitome of a damaged woman whose actions are cruel and who is not even aware of the sorrow she inflicts on her daughters. I read this in a fit of absorption- I just had to know what would happen to Anna and her sisters. Lilly is utterly fascinating and maddening at once. The author is genius at writing about a time and place, with fantastic details. i do think she writes very self-consciously, in hyper poetic prose. I still think this novel is a treasure.

Prose that's proud of itself.......2004-01-24

It's taken me a while to get through this book partly because I'm not very excited about the plot and partly because the author's self-conscious writing style really annoys me. There are lovely phrases here and there, but there are plenty of others that read like something you'd find in a greeting card--they try hard to impress and fail. The author makes deliberate, almost constant use of foreshadowing, perhaps in an attempt to get the reader to stick with the book and not lay it down for good. I'm contemplating the latter.

Stunning and Tragic.......2003-09-27

I finished reading this book several weeks ago and I find that it still haunts me. I loved it and could completely identify with Anna. There is nothing more horrible than the "ultimate" betrayal. The betrayal of one's own mother.

For those readers who did not give the book favorable reviews because of the editing and grammar....get a life and learn to enjoy things just for the entertainment. It is too bad that you live in a world that is not perfect. You must be exhausted from correcting everything around you!

House Under Snow
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House Under Snow
Jill Bialosky
Manufacturer: Harvest / Harcourt, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JZDU5I

The Life Room
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The Life Room
Jill Bialosky
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0151010471

Book Description

Eleanor Cahn is a professor of literature, the wife of a preeminent cardiac surgeon, and a devoted mother. But on a trip to Paris to present a paper on Anna Karenina, Eleanor re-connects with Stephen—a childhood friend with whom she has had a complicated relationship—that forces her to realize that she has suppressed her passionate self for years. As the novel unfolds, we learn of her hidden erotic past: with alluring, elusive Stephen; with ethereal William, her high school boyfriend; with married, egotistical Adam, the painter who initiated her into the intimacies of the "life room," where the artist’s model sometimes becomes muse; and with loyal, steady Michael, her husband. On her return to New York, Eleanor and Stephen’s charged attraction takes on a life of its own and threatens to destroy everything she has.

Jill Bialosky has created a fresh, piercingly real heroine who struggles with the spiritual questions and dilemmas of our time and, like Tolstoy’s immortal Anna Karenina, must choose between desire and responsibility.

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Wanting A Child -
Jill Bialosky -
Manufacturer: Farrar Publishing -
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000QS2T0A

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House Under Snow
Jill Bialosky
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MC18C0

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This book is the essance of so many feelings women have!
The End of Desire: Poems
The Star Points of Exposure
Praise for Bialosky's End of Desire
Snatches of a Life, Tinted and Colored

The End of Desire: Poems
Jill Bialosky
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Subterranean

ASIN: 0679454551
Release Date: 1997-03-04

Amazon.com

In The End of Desire, autobiography coalesces into art. In her first collection, Jill Bialosky is intent on the before and after as she, her mother, and her sisters struggle with the death of her father. The opening sequence, "The House," is a delicate narrative of secrets and loss. In one poem, the two younger girls take turns burying each other under leaves in a game called father. Meanwhile, their mother resorts at first to men, later to alcohol and isolation. As her children are in the yard, building "fathers out of snow," she is abandoned indoors, increasingly unreal. <blockquote> We left her alone for hours,
our skin raw,
holding white like warmth in our hands.
She was almost invisible
in the icy air.
</blockquote> As this woman retreats into sleep and drink, the narrator tries to console the youngest sister with stories: "secret gardens we believed were real, red barns, / horses that could make you cry, magic painted roads." Only occasionally does Bialosky falter, proffering the overt explanation rather than the objective correlative. In "Premonition," for instance, her mother doesn't hear her sister cry because "she was hard into her sleep / where alcohol formed / its impenetrable cloud." But many of her confessional lyrics are more subtle, particularly when the action extends beyond the confines of house and garden and the girls go past their "protective net / of stars and constellations" (even though romance never seems the haven the eldest had promised). The End of Desire is an often discomfiting record of the growth of the poet's mind, one in which grief never releases its grasp. --Siobhan Carson

Book Description

Jill Bialosky's first collection of poems is an exceptional one--moving, very accomplished, marked by an unflinching realism and a sharply observant eye combined with great technical skill. Childhood and adolescence shattered by a father's death and the struggles of a mother to raise her daughters are among its concerns. The poems have a dignity and magic that are quite distinctive.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

This book is the essance of so many feelings women have!.......2001-07-23

This book is wonderfully written. Her style of poetry is breath taking. When I read through this book I found pieces of myself in her words. She has been able to write more of what I feel then I have ever been able too. This is one of the best books I have ever read and would recomend it to anyone who feels a love for poetry.

The End of Desire: Poems.......2000-09-12

With shocking simplicity Jill Bialosky presents intense moments of her life, illuminating the milestones of childhood, adolescence, sexuality and grief. See has a novelist's ability to make us want to read on, as well as the poet's ability to condense feeling. Her poems give the pleasure of sharing someone else's story while almost always touching our own lives. In addition, there is delight in the details of her images.

The Star Points of Exposure.......1999-12-18

"The End of Desire is chilling, deep down, riviting, and wide open. Jill Bialosky's account of an innocence ripened before its time. Enough to make one warm and cold at the same time. Crawl under the covers, because it is an experience of exposure, brave and raw. Left wide open for the vultures/ I too greedily lapped up her words. Licking at my own wounds, tasting salt, and laughing like tears. The wailing inside knocking against the ribs. The chest moving up and down, something caught in the throat. Once funny or innocent. Now wet, and warm trickling down the cheeks as if blood itself. A river. The insides turned out/ this is the beauty of Bialosky's mirror. Poetry reflecting like a pond. Light on top, yet deep down knowing there are dark and murky waters. Muck for between your toes, and slimy fronds to wrap strongly around your ankles. The unknown. AT one point Bialosky reveils, "Why do you worry so, when none of us is spared?" (p 72, The Goddess of Despair). Her poetry like the dirty dishes no one else bothered to notice. The embarrasing stain of adolescent mentruation. Like looking in the mirror, and realizing the falsity, the game. A fleeting glimpse of something shiny, happy. The taste of lemon taffy/ or a familiar cracked doll with faded paint smile. The memory of a warm palm against your face, and the billowy curtains which shimmer in the distance. Their thoughts linger there. Savoring the attic of the soul. A pause between breath as pain tills transformation. Life and death the swinging of an old screen door on the back porch of memory. Bravo!

Praise for Bialosky's End of Desire.......1999-12-10

Bialosky discusses with refreshing simplicity subjects that centuries of poets have anguished over. The terror of death, the sometimes unhappy progression of relationships and the despair of being childless are all subjects that have the danger of becoming cliche once in poem form. Bialosky's poems, however, are so personal and specific that even the age old lamenting of despair seems like a fresh subject. We, as readers, have made a quasi journey through the life of a woman who has struggled to understand the unpredictable nature of life.

Snatches of a Life, Tinted and Colored.......1999-12-09

Jill Bialosky's first book "The End of Desire" is fabulous. It is full of beautiful language and strong narrative poems. Many of the themes of this book--including family, death, sisterhood, daughterhood, childhood, parental love, romantic love, first love, and desire--are universal. The way they are written about, however, is anything but common. They're written about in the true language of poetry, carefully chosen words combined with images of childhood and nature. Although Bialosky's poetry seems to follow a strict layout thematically, her poetry has rich variety within each one. She manages to even address things that are extremely corrosive, such as rape and manipulation, without making her words sound sordid. Instead her tone is sad, but gentle and steady. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes poetry for its rich language and its delicate but honest treatment of tough issues.

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Perpetuation of the Subliminal

Subterranean
Jill Bialosky
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The End of Desire

ASIN: 037570972X
Release Date: 2003-02-04

Book Description

Jill Bialosky follows her acclaimed debut collection, The End of Desire, with this powerful sequence of poems that probes the subterranean depths of eros. Gerald Stern has called Bialosky “the poet of the secret garden, the place, at once, of grace and sadness,” and here she enters that garden again, blending the classical with the contemporary in bold considerations of desire, fertility, virginity, and childbirth. Written against the idealizations of romantic love and motherhood, she tells of the loss of one child and the birth of another, the fierce passions of life before children, the seductions of suicide, and the comforts of art. Throughout, she braids and unbraids the distinct yet often inseparable themes of motherhood, love, and sexuality. “When he comes to me,” she writes,

half-filled glass
in his hand, wanting
me to touch him, I hear
you stir in your crib. I know what your body
  feels like.
The soft skin of a flower, not bruised, not yet
  in torment . . .

Subterranean is the moving and intimate account of the emergence of a female psyche. Like the figures of Persephone and Demeter, who appear in various forms in these poems, Bialosky finds a strange beauty in grief, and emerges from the realms of temptation with insight and distinction.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Perpetuation of the Subliminal.......2002-12-17

There are many emotions and strategies present in Jill Bialosky's Subterranean. The work is very careful, full of presence and reality, and pays great attention to the perpetuation of the subliminal.
I think it very important that we as readers remember not to just read a title but to consider it part of the poem and of the work as a whole. Begin with the title of the work: subterranean. The definition can simply mean "underneath the Earth's surface". However, there is a definition that seems to be much more suited to Bialosky's work: "lying beneath what is revealed or avowed, especially being deliberately concealed". There is this ever-growing need throughout the book to uncover the hidden aspects of our lives. It begins with the first poem, aptly named "Subterranean". We are continually presented with poems that force discovery and want for birth, for renewal.
I had an endless feeling of pulling, of something beneath the words, that there was a force within each poem begging to be discovered. This wonderful intensity pulls the reader through the work, forcefully. You want to read, want to find the cause...you want to know what's underneath the surface. There's a pulsing in this book, a quickening of language, followed by languid urgency, and then a punctuation of thought; a rise and fall, push and pull of poetic and emotional elements.
Bialosky's voice is one that is fresh and unique. Her use of the short-line style brings such poignancy and subtle impact to her work while her languid long line poems present in the latter half of Subterranean exhibit her simple, yet brilliant use of language. The connectedness of her imagery never ceases to form beautiful scenes that help in the smooth presentation of intense emotion.
I would recommend Jill Bialosky's latest book to anyone yearning for a fresh voice with a unique and versatile style. Chilling, provocative, resonant, Subterranean is an experience for any reader eager for a taste of unique poetic storytelling.

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Wanting a Child
Jill (editor); Schulman, Helen (editor) Bialosky
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus & Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OXOJ9G

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Wanting a Child
Jill (editor); Schulman, Helen (editor) Bialosky
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OX9BQM

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