Writer Reinvents a Classic With ‘Scrooge . . . The Relapse’
John McCaffrey is a prolific writer and creative writing teacher who lives in Wainscott. Durell Godfrey In the earliest days
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Credit…Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times Dear readers, Could I interest you in a literary field trip to the sauna? The oak branch whipping is optional. The cold plunge is not. Every so often these shocks to the system are tremendously welcome: a way to clear the mind, heart and qi, even if the dry sauna is filled with groaning men in a midlife trance. Even if the ice bath is really a repurposed meat freezer with no apparent filtration system. The novels I recommend here come close to replicating these extremes — a sudden shove from humid to arctic that stuns the senses. As with any good water circuit, you’ll be marveling at the effects for days. — Joumana “The Body in Question,” by Jill Ciment Fiction, 2019 I do not instinctively consider any of this novel’s elements (Econo Lodges, jury duty or frankly even Central Florida) sexy. Yet in Ciment’s story of an illicit romance between two jurors impaneled on a murder trial, all are essential to their relationship, and sequestration sends it into the extreme. C-2, as she is known for the lion’s share of the book, is a photographer in her 50s, married to an acclaimed journalist three decades older. The specter of caregiving, the shift from erotic to palliative love, makes both uneasy and unsteadies their marriage. Her attraction to F-17, a younger anatomy professor, during voir dire is nearly instantaneous. The case is grotesque: A teenager on the autism spectrum has been accused of killing her brother, a toddler. Right away it becomes a spectacle, drawing the requisite news media, but also busloads of retirees from a nearby community. Editors’ Picks The affair is comparable in emotional pique, and a way to pass the time. What could be a sterile period of horror is infused with a countervailing charge, so consuming that even the “elevator doors kiss.” It provides a respite from group meals at Olive Garden and forced games of Trivial Pursuit. The lovers have more in common than some of the other jurors; both exercise in the motel pool, for […]
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John McCaffrey is a prolific writer and creative writing teacher who lives in Wainscott. Durell Godfrey In the earliest days
Credit: Katie Schneider Gumiran and Rosa Gaia for Conway Elementary An instructional leader in a Bay Area school district told
