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My Life as a Silent Movie

A Novel

Jesse Lee Kercheval author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Indiana University Press

Published:13th Sep '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

My Life as a Silent Movie cover

A discovery that remakes a grieving woman's identity

Presents a vividly rendered world and poses provocative questions on the relationship of art to life.

After losing her husband and daughter in an auto accident, 42-year-old Emma flies to Paris, discovers she has a twin brother whose existence she had not known about, and learns that her birth parents weren't the Americans who raised her, but a White Russian film star of the 1920s and a French Stalinist. A story about identity and the shaping function of art, My Life as a Silent Movie presents a vividly rendered world and poses provocative questions on the relationship of art to life.

In this sharply drawn chronicle of grief, a woman reassembles her identity through her father's art and her brother's tenuous offer of a new life. . . . Kercheval delves deeply into the rawest of emotions and the most wrenching of choices, richly detailing each twist and turn with grace.

* Kirkus Reviews *

Fans of literary fiction will devour this tale of heartbreak, family, and politics. This is a story not to be missed.

* Library Journal *

Kercheval . . . blends fiction with fact in this often tense page turner. The book's energy is by turns bleak and frenetic, and Kercheval deftly draws the reader in to Emma's search for identity. . . . she delivers a compelling rumination on family and the losses that we often consider unimaginable.

* Wisconsin State Journal *

In this finely-wrought odyssey of reconstructing a life while tracing birth parents, Kercheval's prose reads like woof scuttling feverishly to fill in the warp.

* NU

ISBN: 9780253010247

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 295g

220 pages