Whistling in the Dark: Personal Essays

by Lucienne S Bloch

Overview

Lucienne S. Bloch's beautifully written personal essays explore her world on the Upper West Side of New York City. Growing up in the 1950s as the daughter of refugees from Hitler's Europe who longed for their former lives and culture, these essays explore her youth, her mother's Viennese upbringing, her father's work in the diamond business and long battle with Alzheimer's, her typewriter, the landscapes of New York, her ongoing sense of alienation, and her development as a writer.

Readers will be swept up in the graceful prose that distinguishes Lucienne S. Bloch's award-winning work. The universal themes of memory, belonging, family, identity, survival, and aging are artfully woven throughout the essays in Whistling in the Dark and will resonate with readers of all ages and backgrounds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954805446
Publisher:	Bold Story Press
Publication date:	04/11/2023
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Lucienne S. Bloch was born in Belgium, raised in New York City, and graduated from Wellesley College, where she received an Academy of American Poets Award and a prize from the New England Poetry Society. She subsequently worked at New Directions, and then at Random House. After marrying and raising three children, she began writing fiction. Her first novel, On the Great-Circle Route, was published by Simon & Schuster. Her second novel, Finders Keepers, was published by Houghton Mifflin. One of her short stories was chosen for the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and is anthologized in The Sound of Fiction.She wrote "Hers" columns for The New York Times, was a Resident Fellow at Yaddo, and was awarded a Fellowship in Fiction by the New York Foundation for the Arts. She began writing personal essays sixteen years ago. They have been published in Raritan, North American Review, Sewanee Review, Southwest Review, and Five Points, and one was excerpted in Harper's. Four were cited as Notable in The Best American Essays of 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2021. She lives in New York City with her husband.

Editorial Reviews

2023-04-21
Bloch muses on growing up as an immigrant in New York City in this collection of essays.

In this self-described “refugee’s tale of internalized outsiderhood,” the celebrated author offers readers an eclectic collection of 19 essays that blend memoir with broader observations on topics that span from isolation to typewriters. Many of the pieces focus on her childhood as a Belgian immigrant whose family fled Nazi Europe during World War II and settled in New York City. The introductory entry, “An Island Education,” recounts Bloch’s childhood quest to not only learn English, but to perfect its “peppy affable voice,” which she contrasts with the “hissy dignity” of her native French. She believed that the language had “magical powers” and that after mastering it, she “would be transformed, an American.” Yet, despite a successful career writing in English, she notes that it has yet “to make me a real American.” Adolescent longings to belong are at the center of “Sounding the Territory,” which touches on Bloch’s love of periodicals; Life Magazinegave the European-born Manhattanite a glimpse into the “real whole big thing” of America, from evangelical revivals in the South to Midwestern bake-offs. Even the “Anglophile-Ivy-Establishment” New Yorker introduced her to a world “that was as foreign to my experience as hot rodding on a highway in Texas.” Other essays explore topics ranging from her brief babysitting career working for novelist Howard Fast, who had recently been targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for his affiliation with the Communist Party, to her father’s career in the diamond trade. The recipient of multiple poetry awards, author of two novels, and columnist for theNew York Times, Bloch is a talented writer whose prose effectively balances an erudite writing style with accessibility. Though its stories are based on the author’s unique experiences, the book eloquently captures global feelings of adolescent optimism, postmodern ennui, and the ubiquity of alienation among immigrants. Fans of Bloch may be left wanting more recollections pertaining to her writing career and work inside New York’s publishing industry.

A moving collection that uses memoir to explore universal human experiences.

Kirkus Reviews