From Briefs to Books

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By: Ulmer & Berne LLP

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Patty Shlonsky

Latest from From Briefs to Books

“And in our laughter we heard our youth, and it is not not a dangerous thing to be at the doorstep of middle age and at an impasse in your life and to suddenly be hearing sounds from your youth.” This passage summarizes the 373 pages of Fleishman Is In Trouble. Toby Fleishman is a 41 year old hepatologist going through a divorce with his wildly successful talent agent wife Rachel. The Fleishman’s live in…
The Dutch House is a marvelously moving novel about a house, its inhabitants, their lives and the impact of the house on everything. “The Dutch House, as it came to be known in Elkins Park and Jenkintown and Glenside and all the way to Philadelphia, referred not to the house’s architecture but to its inhabitants. The Dutch House was the place where those Dutch people with the unpronounceable name lived. Seen from certain vantage points…
The Most Fun We Ever had is a family saga, moving back and forth from 1975 to 2017. The story chronicles the ever growing Sorenson family. Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson meet in 1975 at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where Marilyn is an undergraduate and David is a medical student. Marilyn is very outspoken and experienced and David is a little more reserved and a lot less experienced. They fall in love…
“There’s been a coup, here in the United States, just as in times past in so many other countries. Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated.” The Testaments is Margaret Atwood’s follow up to The Handmaid’s Tale. The story takes place in the country known as Gilead; the United States no…
Akin is the story of an 80 year old widower’s travels through the past and into the future. Noah Selvaggio has decided to celebrate his upcoming 80th birthday by taking a trip to his place of birth, Nice France. Noah’s wife, Joan, who had died nine years earlier, continues to talk to Noah. Noah and Joan were both scientists, although Joan had been significantly more renowned than Noah. Joan was Jewish and had kept her…
“I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful…To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.” On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a haunting letter from a son to his illiterate mother written in a dark, poetic stream of consciousness focused on death and cruelty. The writer, Little Dog, is 28 years old at the time he is…
“Go as far as you can—way out yonder where the Crawdads sing…in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters.” Catherine Danielle Clark—“Kya”—the Marsh Girl—was 6 years old, when her mother walked out of the shack in the marsh, leaving her five children and abusive husband to fend for themselves. Slowly, each of the siblings walked away, leaving 6 year old Kya alone with her father. The shack had no plumbing and was…
“Celestial Bodies” takes place in Oman and  is a story of family life, love and change. The story revolves around three sisters, Mayya, Asma and Khawla, and their families past and future. Mayya is a seamstress, quiet and secretly in love with Ali bin Khallaf, when Abdallah, the son of Merchant Sulayman asks for her hand. The family accepts on her behalf and she is married. Mayya and Abdallah  have three children together, London, Muhammed…
Inland is the alternating stories of Lurie Mattie and Nora Lark and the ultimate intersection of those stories. Nora’s story takes place in 1893 in Amargo, Arizona Territory and Lurie’s story takes place throughout his life in a variety of places in the 1800s. Lurie has been on the run since he was six years old, initially with his father until his father’s death, at which point he is sold to a Mr. Saurelle as…
“The Ditch” is a complex story about life, family, different cultures, love, revenge, aging, illness and the intersection of it all. The story revolves around “Robert”, the mayor of Amsterdam and his wife “Sylvia”. Robert is the narrator and the names are aliases, because the real names “would only confuse things. People make all kinds of assumptions when it comes to names.” Robert is from Holland and Sylvia is from a different unnamed country and…