Edith Pearlman

We’re obviously big fans of Edith Pearlman—her story “Life Lessons” is coming out in our fall/winter issue (8.2), and you can read  her stories in several CR back issues too. So we’re happy to see that her new collection, Binocular Vision, has garnered Sunday book reviews from both the NY Times and the LA Times. Check ’em out!

As a celebratory bonus, here’s a sneak peak of the opening lines of “Life Lessons”:

My father’s two sisters often complained I was young for my age, whatever my age then happened to be. I was late mastering toothbrush, hair ribbon, shoelace. I was discourteous. I was a show-off.

But, really, didn’t I have a lot to show off? At two I talked in sentences. At three I completed huge jigsaw puzzles. At five I was improving my word power with the help of the Readers’ Digest. At seven I was composing symphonies, like Mozart—well, not exactly—but I was playing Mozart, the easy minuets, rather badly. Every Wednesday Poppa drove me across town to Miss Paulina’s. Poppa was free to drive me to piano lessons because at that time, just after the War, doctors took Wednesdays off. He chose a zigzag route to avoid traffic lights. When Momma drove somewhere she took main streets. When she had to stop at a light she adjusted the barrette that made its blissful home in her dark curls or checked her lipstick in the mirror. Often behind the wheel she sang some Irish tune. “Danny Boy” was a favorite—Dan was my father’s name, though he wasn’t Irish.