In response to the appearance of Where the Light Falls on Prevention Magazine’s list of 55 Happy Books Proven To Boost Your Mood, I was invited to speak at my local public library on September 27th. It seemed a good idea to talk about the book in relation to the list—but that raised the question, just what is a happy book? I decided to tease out common threads among some of the titles and examine the extent to which I was conscious of each factor as I wrote. First topic: Food. Read More
Picturing a World
Sororis Club
May 9, 2018
Blog post tip: In Where the Light Falls, I invented a private supper club for my women artists. With my eye turned now toward New York City and woman’s suffrage, it is fascinating to read about the feminist Sorosis Club’s first lunch at public restaurant, Delmonico’s.
For a digitization of an 1893 article about the club in Cosmopolitan Magazine, click here. Read More
Man in the Moon tree house
July 25, 2017
In looking for images of medieval taverns this morning, I stumbled across this 18thC painting. It has nothing to do with my new story, but it instantly reminded me of the Swiss Family Robinson tree house restaurant in Where the Light Falls. Oh, yea! And doesn’t it just cry out for its own story? Read More
Female gaze
May 30, 2016
Blog tip: Sunday post at the always interesting Lines and Colors, sent me to Spanish painter Ramon Casas, who studied with
Carolus-Duran at about the Read More
Carolus-Duran at about the Read More
Happy New Year's Day
January 1, 2015
On this first day of January, would that we could all be sitting, smartly dressed, in a Parisian garden-café or brasserie!
When I first saw Manet’s painting early in my writing of Where the Light Falls, I did a joyous double-take. Here was Read More
When I first saw Manet’s painting early in my writing of Where the Light Falls, I did a joyous double-take. Here was Read More
Hungaria Restaurant, 1908
October 27, 2014
Having read that Hungarian restaurants were among the first ethnic restaurants in New York to attract customers outside their own community, I’ve sent Mattie and her lover to one early in ANONYMITY. For the fun of it, I tried to find images of one in 1908. Lo and behold, this photograph! It shows Read More
Back to a future restaurant
August 4, 2014
Oh, what fun! I thought when I saw a Public Domain Review post on Albert Robida’s Leaving the Opera in the Year 2000. I keep an eye out for cafés and restaurants and will cheerfully add this one to my directory of imaginary eating places. The verve and wit of Robida’s style carries well from Jeanette’s 19th C into Mattie’s 20th C—for that matter, as a chic French version of steampunk right into the 21st C. Read More
Duval restaurant
March 10, 2014
To make a world real, it seems to me you have to know what people ate and where and when. When the Duval restaurants turned up early in my research I knew I could use them; and Renoir's painting of a Duval waitress became a touchstone image for me. Not only the quietly respectable young woman but the figured wallpaper and curtains suggested a feminine air that would be reassuring to Jeanette and Effie.
Pierre Louis Duval, a butcher, began selling servings of a meat cooked in broth to workers ca. 1855. From this venture grew a chain of restaurants. They were clean, well-run places where women on a budget could eat safely. Read More
Pierre Louis Duval, a butcher, began selling servings of a meat cooked in broth to workers ca. 1855. From this venture grew a chain of restaurants. They were clean, well-run places where women on a budget could eat safely. Read More
Women of the night
February 24, 2014
Degas’ pastel of two women sitting at a café table provided the image of a prostitute biting her thumb as a sign of availability. I didn’t think that Edward would be attracted to anyone in this picture, however, and so I imagined a younger, sadder example of a girl who had to Read More