Product Description

At once a memoir of an exotic life, a meditation on the art and craft of writing, and a brilliant examination of the always complex relationship between fiction and life, Lynn Freeds critically acclaimed Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home surprises, instructs, and delights. With dark and comforting wisdom (Anne Lamott) and great intellectual and emotional range (Diane Johnson), Freed tears off all fictional disguises and exposes the human being behind the artist. A must-read for writers, readers, and anyone engaged in literature, Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home is destined to be a classic in the field of writing about writing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1052364 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-24
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .47 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Freed, author of five novels and, most recently, the story collection The Curse of the Appropriate Man, offers insights into her writing and her life in 11 clean, incisive essays that mix the personal with the instructional without going too deeply into either. How autobiography shapes fiction particularly interests her: in "Sex with the Servants," Freed describes how her novel Home Ground caused a scandal in her native South Africa (at the few book-related events that weren't cancelled, all anyone wanted to know was if she'd really touched her garden boy's penis). Her family, who also appeared in print, were not nearly as outraged, and for would-be writers, Freed offers several firm pronouncements ("Writers themselves are natural murderers"; "The real writer... is a moral reprobate"), which suggest that to worry about others' feelings cheapens one's art. This apologia for the way writers skewer those around them shares space with a careful consideration of her own work's themes—alienation, family, home, travel, performance—episodic but interesting glimpses into Freed's life (a larger-than-life mother, a wild family, a troubled marriage, a difficult gig teaching writing). Freed's honesty is always tempered by what feels like cool reserve, but this nevertheless is an instructive, enlightening book. 10 b&w photos. (Sept.)
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From Booklist
It's entirely possible some wag somewhere has said that reading about writing is akin to watching paint dry. If so, then that wry wit has clearly never read Freed's take on the subject. An acclaimed novelist and short story writer, Freed turns the same careful introspection that defines her imaginative work to herself, her craft, and the forces that have inspired her. As much a personal memoir of her childhood in South Africa as it is a treatise on the pitfalls of publishing, Freed, the daughter of artistic parents who enjoyed a minor reputation in the theater, credits much of her own penchant for the dramatic and predilection for travel to their early influence. Though many writers work hard to deny the dominance of such personal muses, Freed openly acknowledges their place in her work, and her contemplative examination on the moral and creative tightrope writers walk when blending two such highly charged worlds reveals the mark of a truly cerebral and focused writer. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Lynn Freedis the recipient of the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of five highly praised novels and a short-story collection, The Curse of the Appropriate Man, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. She lives in Sonoma, California.