reviews_and_ramblings | Event: Rachel Kramer Bussel is on fire!

Date: Thursday, November 17
Time: at 7:00 pm
Place: KGB Bar in NYC, 84 East 4th Street

Thursday, November 17, Rachel will appear at KGB Bar in NYC, 84 East 4th Street, at 7:00 pm. The event is sponsored by Drunken! Careening! Writers! and she'll be appearing with Sally Bellerose, author of The Girls Club and Meri Weiss, author of Closer to Fine.

Women in Lust: Erotic Stories edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Paperback: 244 pages
Publisher: Cleis Press (November 8, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1573447242
ISBN-13: 978-1573447249
Amazon: Women in Lust: Erotic Stories

Lust is urgent, overpowering, and potent. While in real life readers may not always act every time desire calls, in fiction, they can abandon the safety of propriety to seek out lust and sex wherever they find them. The characters in Women in Lust may vary in the objects of their lust, and how they go about acting on it, but what connects them is that pure impulse for a lover. Sometimes he is someone she knows well, a boyfriend or a husband; in other stories, he is a stranger, and is desirable precisely because he represents the unknown. Whether watching a lover playing guitar, going out for a smoke or simply engaging in a chance encounter, these women seize the opportunities presented to them, and savor the lovers who teach them about themselves, helping open them up to new sensual possibilities.

The Girls Club by Sally Bellerose
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Bywater Books (September 13, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1932859780
ISBN-13: 978-1932859782
Amazon: The Girls Club

The Girls Club is the coming-of-age story of a young, white, working-class woman. Set in the 1970s, the story revolves around Cora Rose as she copes with her emerging sexuality, an illness her sisters refer to as "the dreaded bowel disease," and the conflicts created by the growing disparity between her desires and her Catholic upbringing.

Part one deals with the three sisters' adolescent relationship to each other and their Catholic working-class world. Cora Rose's distress at being caught in an embrace with her best friend Stella leads her to sleep with the first boy who shows interest. She is married with a child at age eighteen.

Part two shows how the sisters help and hinder each other in their struggles to take control and responsibility over their lives.

Part three reveals Cora Rose's physical challenges, including an ostomy, that further complicate her feelings about her sexuality and increase her need for her sisters' support. She becomes involved with a woman she meets at a bar called The Girls Club. Marie and Renee play out their own struggles as Cora Rose leaves her husband, fights to keep her child, and overcomes religious and social prejudices that threaten her personal integrity.

Sally Bellerose was awarded a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts based on an excerpt from this book. The manuscript was a finalist for the James Jones Fellowship, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, and the Bellwether Endowment. Sally Bellerose lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Closer To Fine by Meri Weiss
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Kensington (July 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 075822690X
ISBN-13: 978-0758226907
Amazon: Closer To Fine

In this luminous debut novel about a young woman putting her life back together after the death of her brother, Meri Weiss explores hope after heartbreak, and the myriad ways that those we love can make us whole again...
Growing up, Alexandra and her older brother Ashley were never close. Her decision to move in to Ashley's Upper West Side apartment to care for him during his final months surprises herself as much as anyone, but it can't erase the guilt Alex feels at the years they wasted. Now, four years after his death, with a bout of depression and a suicide attempt behind her, Alex feels fragile but no longer broken. As for normal--only with her roommate and best friend Jordy and their gay friend Jax can she feel anything close to that.

Then Alex's therapist, Sam, bequeaths her a cryptic message that changes everything. The note reads simply, "You're missing a piece of yourself." At Sam's funeral, Alex meets Tucker--the charming, cute son of one of New York's wealthiest businessmen. As their romance deepens, Tucker tries to draw Alex out of her safety zone. But is Tucker the key to Sam's riddle, or is the real answer still waiting to be found?

At once humorous and heartbreaking, and peopled with deftly rendered characters, Closer to Fine is an exquisite first novel about love, loss, and self discovery, written with uncommon verve and grace.