“Minot is an O.G. writer of female desire who published the spare and potent “Lust and Other Stories” in 1989, when July was still in knee socks and Sally Rooney just a glimmer in Mr. Rooney’s eye. Its neon-lettered cover blazed from every cool girl’s bookshelf.”
— The New York Times
“‘Don’t Be a Stranger’ shows how powerfully transformative a sexual entanglement can be for a woman starved for sensation and attention. And how a lover’s approach-avoidance behavior can curdle pleasure into obsession.”
— The Boston Globe
Her new novel Don’t Be a Stranger is a gripping, sensual, and provocative work from one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary fiction.
About Don't Be a Stranger:
Ivy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor drug charge, Ansel’s beguiling good looks and quiet intensity instantly seduce her. Despite the gulf between their ages and experience the physical chemistry between them is overpowering, and over the heady weeks and months that follow Ivy finds her life bifurcated by his presence: On the surface she is a responsible mother, managing the demands of friends, an ex-husband, home; but emotionally, psychologically, sexually, she is consumed by desire and increasingly alive only in the stolen moments-out-of-time, with Ansel in her bed.
Minot's first novel Monkeys (1986) was published in a dozen countries and won the Prix Femina Étranger in France. She wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Stealing Beauty” (1995.) Her novel Evening, nominated for the LA Book Award, was a worldwide bestseller and became a major motion picture in 2007. Her stories have received O. Henry Awards, and inclusion in many anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories. Her eighth book, a collection of stories, Why I Don’t Write, was published in 2020.
Reception on the portico to follow
Donations are deeply appreciated.
This is not a ticketed event, seating is first come, first served
Event Venue
45 Market St, Cold Spring, NY, United States, New York 10516