The Merc and Beatrice.com
present
a reading
with Cathleen Schine and Rivka Galchen
May 14, 2008 at 7pm
Cathleen Schine is the author of the internationally best-selling novels The Love Letter, which was made into a movie starring Kate Capshaw, and Rameau’s Niece, which was also made into a movie (The Misadventures of Margaret), starring Parker Posey. Schine’s other novels are Alice in Bed, To the Bird House, The Evolution of Jane, She is Me, and most recently, The New Yorkers. In addition to novels she has written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She grew up in Westport, CT.
In two decades and seven novels, Cathleen Schine has made a specialty of creating spirited heroines in search of a brainy conceit to live by, whether it’s bird-watching (To the Birdhouse), French Enlightenment philosophy (Rameau’s Niece),
Darwinian theory (The Evolution of Jane), or Flaubert’s famous dictum about
Madame Bovary (She Is Me). But in Schine’s latest zingy domestic comedy, The New Yorkers, the characters don’t have conceits. They have dogs. Or they don’t—and the novel’s own conceit is that this makes all the difference. On the slightly down-at-heels Upper West Side block where the story unfolds, happiness—or the closest Schine’s brightly downbeat characters can come to it—is next to dogginess.
Rivka Galchen, of New York City, received her M.D. from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, having spent a year in South America working on public health issues. Galchen recently completed her MFA at Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham Fellow. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, will be published in June. Her essay on the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics was published in The Believer. She is the recipient of a 2006 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.
In Atmospheric Disturbances, psychiatrist Dr. Leo Liebenstein sets off to find his wife, Rema, who he believes has been replaced by a simulacrum. Also missing is one of Leo's patients, Harvey, who is convinced he receives coded messages from the Royal Academy of Meteorology to control the weather. Leo turns to actual Royal Academy member Tzvi Gal-Chen's meteorological work to guide him in his search for his wife. Leo's quest takes him through Buenos Aires and Patagonia. As he becomes increasingly delusional and erratic, Galchen adeptly reveals the actual situation to readers, including Rema's anguish and anger at her husband. Leo's devotion to the real Rema is heartbreaking and maddening; he cannot see that the woman he seeks has been with him all along.
To register, call (212) 755-6710 or email info@mercantilelibrary.org
Read Along and Mystery Scavenger Hunt in Grand Central Terminal
May 17
This event for kids will feature The Malted Falcon by award-winning children’s author Bruce Hale. Pint-size reptilian sleuth, Chet Gecko, and his partner Natalie Attired search for the winning ticket in The Malted Falcon contest, which has mysteriously gone missing at Emerson Hickey Elementary. The chance to win the chocolatiest dessert ever imagined has proved too tempting for someone... No. 7 in the Chet Gecko Mystery Series.
Location: Grand Central Terminal - Dining Concourse
100 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017
This event produced in partnership with the Children ’s Book Council.
To register, call (212) 755-6710 or email info@mercantilelibrary.org
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