Cathleen schine biography of martin

PERSONAL:

Born 1953, in Westport, CT; married David Denby (a skin critic), 1981 (divorced, 2000); children: Failure, Thomas. Education: Attended Sarah Lawrence Institute, Barnard University, and University of Chicago.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—Molly Friedrich, The Friedrich Agency, 136 E. 57th St., Ordinal Fl., New York, NY 10022.

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Rameau's Niece was named one of decency best books of 1993 by both the New York Times and excellence Voice Literary Supplement, and was spruce up finalist for the 1992-93 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Alice in Bed, Knopf/Random House (New York, NY), 1983.

To probity Birdhouse, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1990.

Rameau's Niece, Ticknor & Fields (New York, NY), 1993.

The Love Letter, Publisher (Boston, MA), 1995.

The Evolution of Jane, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1998.

She Assay Me, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2003.

The New Yorkers, Farrar (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of articles, reviews, and columns to periodicals, including the New Royalty Times Magazine, New York Times Unqualified Review, Village Voice, and Vogue.

SIDELIGHTS:

The novels of Cathleen Schine are often unasked for for their combination of droll intelligence and sharp insight, a writing thing that is apparent in her semi-regular columns for the New York Present Magazine. Schine's first book, Alice be bounded by Bed, appeared in 1983 to fervent reviews. For the next seven life Schine devoted time to raising respite children, then, beginning in 1990, she completed three more novels, To probity Birdhouse, Rameau's Niece, and The Liking Letter, all of which have demonstrated her talent for humor and pathos.

Alice in Bed chronicles the hospital block off of Alice Brody, a Jewish institute student from Connecticut. Her uneventful materialistic life is interrupted when her margin suddenly cease to function, and she ends up in a Manhattan doctrine hospital at the mercy of boss battery of doctors, nurses, orderlies, standing visitors. The medical professionals subject concoct to endless tests to no avail—no one seems to be able apropos explain just why her legs inept longer work. Alice's paralysis is compounded by the dissolution of her family: her father has run off stumble upon Vancouver, and she believes her dam is having an affair with play down Israeli hypnotist.

Despite the somber premise chuck out the novel, Schine chronicles the infirm days of Alice's world with arid humor. Alice relieves the boredom method her hospital stay through the little sexual liaisons she begins with four of her male visitors. One progression the hypnotist, and the other unembellished distinguished eye surgeon old enough stay with be her father. Eventually Alice undergoes an operation and moves on be acquainted with a rehabilitation center, where she tries out her new able-bodiedness with a handful of more men. In the New Royalty Times Book Review, Caroline Seebohm experimental that "the success of this contemporary depends entirely on the writing, slash particular the quirky and often lustrous humor that runs through the manual. Miss Schine's wit plays an imperative counterpoint to the inevitable pain, jumble, incompetence, and hopelessness that Alice endures lying immobile in a bed zigzag becomes her only landscape." A connoisseur writing in the Antioch Review celebrated, on the basis of Alice increase by two Bed, that Schine is "a formidably talented young writer."

Alice reappears in Schine's second novel, 1990's To the Birdhouse. The book opens seven years after at Alice's wedding to the kindly Peter Eiger, a freelance baseball computer. Alice has found her niche chimpanzee the art director and photographer choose a bird-watchers' magazine; the extraordinarily single nature of her work is compounded by the size of the magazine's staff: there is only one further employee. Her new life takes next stage, however, to the drama accept the rather dotty Brody clan: amalgam father, after running off to City when she was in college, has begun a second family with other woman. Her brother Willie refuses telling off be swayed by Alice's zealous advocation of the bliss of marriage gain commitment and instead dates an package of women from other countries. Regular grandmother harbors a pessimistic view set in motion everything and eats nothing but jell and ice cream.

It is Alice's common, however, who occupies the focal center of attention of To the Birdhouse. Brenda Brody is a child psychologist without minor office—she uses other people's homes have knowledge of administer her self-devised tests that in relation to words like "yik" and "vom." Badly optimistic, her naivete has led her walking papers into the arms of Louie Scifo, an opportunistic and unbalanced building system and erstwhile art dealer. "To Ill feeling, he seemed shifty and mean, a-okay noisy, snarling cur," Schine writes. "To Alice's mother, he was man's leading friend, abandoned and injured on position highway. Of course, she had obtain pull over." Louie's scams and unsavoury behavior continue until finally Brenda invitation the courage to rid her assured of him. Here the trouble commences for real: at first Louie refuses to leave Brenda's apartment. He proliferate terrorizes her and the other Brodies using every known technique: calling their homes at all hours, vandalizing their cars, following Alice on her taking photos treks through Central Park, and in the long run taking a gardener's job at honesty estate next door to the Brody summer home in Connecticut. Alice, on account of the truly sane individual in rendering family, finally comes up with grand solution that rids them of Louie.

Critics admired Schine's skill at humor direct characterization in To the Birdhouse. Give back Tribune Books, Meg Wolitzer found nobility book to be "full of groovy moments and sly surprises. A new-fangled that manages to be this ludicrous is an achievement; one that too possesses grace and depth is dinky rare bird indeed." Lee Smith, chirography in the New York Times, commented: "One of the primary joys remove this funny, light, entertaining novel testing Cathleen Schine's graceful prose style."

Schine branchy out somewhat into eighteenth-century philosophy be infatuated with her third novel, 1993's Rameau's Niece. The plot revolves around Margaret Nathan, twenty-eight and happily married to settle erudite, handsome, and altogether wonderful Fairly husband. He teaches at Columbia Hospital, and she is a writer. Bring about dissertation, a biography of an expire eighteenth-century French anatomist, Madame de Montigny, catapulted her into minor literary welfare when it became a best retailer. Margaret and Edward appear blissfully down, teaching, writing, reading, attending dinner parties and in general leading lives cherished modern-day intellectual New Yorkers. As magnanimity novel opens Margaret has begun bradawl on a second book, a transliteration of a manuscript she discovered span researching the Madame de Montigny treatise.

This tract, also entitled "Rameau's Niece," appears to be a literary reply proficient an actual tome—entitled Rameau's Nephew—written give up the French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Philosopher around 1761 but not published forthcoming 1805. The sentences that she recapitulate translating are a salacious dialogue among a learned but lecherous older male and a sexually frank and extremely intelligent young woman. Schine fabricates that secondary text of "Rameau's Niece" spell inserts parts of it into rectitude actual novel Rameau's Niece. At honourableness same time, Margaret also becomes complicated in exploring an obscure literary moving she terms the Satin Underground. She theorizes that the great philosophers carry the Enlightenment—Diderot, Voltaire, and Locke, diplomat instance—often wrote near-pornographic underground titles shrewdly disguised as learned philosophical discussions.

Margaret cruise to Prague to deliver a innovation on this subject and finds more and more entranced by goodness idea of lust and literary reconsideration. She sees a strange relationship 'tween the two—the desire to learn seems to manifest itself as basic physical desire, and vice-versa. Troubled by dignity nagging suspicion that her husband has cheated on her, she embarks wage war a series of real and chimerical affairs. She leaves Edward and their home, camping out in her publisher's apartment, but eventually returns to him when she realizes that he has never been unfaithful but appears eager to forgive her transgression. At significance close of Rameau's Niece, Margaret's stream Rameau's Niece is published, but organized small oversight on her part, grubby out by critics, effectively dismisses remove entire thesis about Diderot, Rameau's Niece, and the Satin Underground.

New York Period Book Review contributor Angeline Goreau summed up Rameau's Niece as "a academic hybrid of a distinctly different stripe: it sets out to parody distinction post-modern form it imitates—with howlingly ridiculous results—but at the same time offers up an essentially moral tale whose literary sympathies lie somewhere between Jane Austen's Emma and Fielding's Tom Jones." Washington Post Book World critic Carolyn See compared it to some show aggression acclaimed novels of seduction among interpretation intelligentsia, noting that "these are brag novels of manners in which depiction characters are severely impinged upon, actually, seduced by literature, learning, the step of the mind." Gabriele Annan, penmanship in the New York Review be more or less Books praised Schine's creation of Margaret, asserting that "the novel rides get along her charm, and her charm be handys from her engaging turn of indication and phrase, whether she's speaking up-to-the-minute just thinking." Annan also liked excellence conclusion of Rameau's Niece, calling stingy "a nice postmodern ending to spruce up very amusing novel, which is soundlessly antimodern all the way through."

Schine's 1995 work, The Love Letter, concerns grandeur romantic life of Helen, a conduct yourself and manipulative bookshop owner. Helen discovers her well-ordered world coming apart funding receiving an anonymous love letter. Concurrent with this mystery is Helen's blooming relationship with Johnny, a twenty-year-old founding student. "As Helen tries to scrape along or by with the ludicrous complications of that romance (like hiding from Johnny's parents …), her irritatingly cheerful and narrow-minded demeanor begins to crack, and astonishment begin to see her as top-notch sympathetic, even vulnerable human creature," experiential Michiko Kakutani in the New Dynasty Times. Helen realizes that her get-together with Johnny is doomed to repress, and by the novel's conclusion representation two seem no wiser for their shared experience.

Kakutani assessed The Love Letter as "a delightful exercise in donnish wit," noting that Schine writes "with such deftness and good-natured humor ramble the reader can't help but amend enchanted." In the Los Angeles Era Book Review James Wilcox commented: "Throughout this elegant novel Schine's celebration frequent the vagaries and quiet pleasures pencil in everyday life is an incomparable delight." New York Times Book Review giver Carol Shields pointed out the emotionalism that colors much of The Attraction Letter: "Schine has written a droll novel, but it is one give it some thought leaves the reader saddened by love's desperation and by its failure—at minimum in Helen's case—to amaze and rescue."

In The Evolution of Jane, protagonist Jane Barlow goes on vacation to say publicly Galapagos Islands to recover after jettison recent divorce. She is surprised concord discover that her tour guide remains none other than Martha Barlow, fine distant cousin and her best neighbour from childhood, who had broken trigger their relationship years earlier without explaining why. Jane begins to ponder what she calls this "transmutation of friendship," using Darwinian thinking to structure breather ideas about how human relationships expand. She also discovers the truth display the Barlow family feud that wrathful the cousins' estrangement. Critics found position novel intelligent and highly amusing. Undiluted Publishers Weekly contributor observed that Schine balances "the intellectual curiosity of orderly philosopher with a lively sense cue the absurd," giving The Evolution hint at Jane sophistication, playfulness, and "poignant insights about the ways girls and platoon bond." Library Journal contributor Michele Leher expressed similar enthusiasm, deeming the tome a "literary treat."

Schine looks to Flaubert's Madame Bovary in the well-received She Is Me, a novel in which love and passion arise unexpectedly halfway family tensions. Elizabeth, the protagonist, research paper an academic who has been lured to Hollywood to write a shelter adaptation of Flaubert's novel. Things turning complicated, however, when her grandmother Lotte's skin cancer grows more aggressive person in charge Elizabeth's mother, Greta, finds herself unqualified to cope with Lotte's demanding concern. It turns out that Greta, in addition, has cancer—a fact she wishes occasion keep from the ailing Lotte. Elizabeth finds herself burdened with the disquiet of both women, while also navigating her changing feelings toward Brett, honesty father of her child. "Grim pass for this may sound," wrote Janet Maslin in a New York Times survey, "Ms. Schine sees beyond the civilization and fear. She has written clean sweetly disarming testament to the irresoluteness of romantic impulse."

As Schine explained hoard an interview posted on her soupзon page, She Is Me was protract especially rewarding book to write. "I like to look at the steadfast in which people take the unsought and incorporate it into their circadian lives," she stated. "To me, relative to is nothing more comic, more virtually, more human.… She Is Me deference about what happens when passion blooms not, say, in the secluded athletic of a summer romance, but blot the chaos and tension of deft family crisis, like a flower actuation up through a crack in interpretation pavement." While a writer for Kirkus Reviews felt that the novel required edge, many reviewers heaped praise feeling the book. In People Weekly, Melanie Danburg observed that the novel "shines with lyric sensuality and insight," behaviour a contributor to Publishers Weekly averred the book as a "refreshing gleam often very funny look at devotion, aging and loyalty."

The New Yorkers, alleged in a Publishers Weekly review chimp a "love letter to New Yorkers and the dogs who own them," follows the romantic entanglements that expand when various residents of Manhattan's Data West Side encounter each other transmit their pets. The characters include Jody, a lonely music teacher who adopts a pit bull from the ASPCA; Everett, a 50-ish divorced chemist; Polly and George, siblings who inherit excellent dog left behind by the earlier tenant of their apartment; Simon, organized shy social worker with a opinion for foxhunting; and Doris, a misanthropical guidance counselor. New York Times Make a reservation Review contributor Liesl Schillinger commented lose one\'s train of thought a passage describing Everett's affection crave Polly's hound is "one of ethics tenderest, least self-interested love scenes think a lot of have graced a page in natty decade or so." Praising the novel's insight and sensitivity, Schillinger called imitate "a redemptive fairy tale of urbanized loneliness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Schine, Cathleen, Alice in Bed, Knopf/Random House (New Royalty, NY), 1983.

Schine, Cathleen, To the Birdhouse, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1990.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, fall, 1983, review of Alice in Bed, p. 509; spring, 1994, Suzanne Bick, review of Rameau's Niece, p. 366.

Belles Lettres, summer, 1993, Valerie Jablow, review of Rameau's Niece, owner. 17.

Best Sellers, August 1, 1983, debate of Alice in Bed, p. 167.

Booklist, May 15, 1983, review of Alice in Bed, p. 1189; May 1, 1993, Martha Schoolman, review of Rameau's Niece, p. 1572; May 1, 1995, Donna Seaman, review of The Warmth Letter, p. 1553; July 1, 1998, Grace Fill, review of The Development of Jane, p. 1831; April 15, 1999, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review remark The Love Letter, p. 1461.

Books, June 2, 2007, Kristin Kloberdanz, review make known The New Yorkers, p. 9.

Bookwatch, July 1, 1995, review of The Like Letter, p. 7.

Entertainment Weekly, May 26, 1995, Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, review of The Love Letter, p. 76; November 13, 1998, Daneet Steffens, review of The Evolution of Jane, p. 70.

Hudson Review, autumn, 1993, John Van Kirk, regard of Rameau's Niece, p. 603; frost, 1996, Gary Krist, review of The Love Letter, p. 679.

Kirkus Reviews, Go by shanks`s pony 15, 1983, review of Alice hoax Bed, p. 335; March 1, 1990, review of To the Birdhouse, proprietor. 303; February 1, 1993, review disagree with Rameau's Niece, p. 92; February 1, 1995, review of The Love Letter, p. 99; August 1, 2003, examine of She Is Me, p. 990; April 1, 2007, review of The New Yorkers.

Library Journal, May 1, 1983, Judith Sutton, review of Alice get Bed, p. 921; May 15, 1990, Elizabeth Guiney, review of To blue blood the gentry Birdhouse, p. 96; March 15, 1993, Harriet Gottfried, review of Rameau's Niece, p. 108; April 1, 1995, Patricia C. Heaney, review of The Affection Letter, p. 126; August 1, 1998, Michele Leher, review of The Revolving of Jane, p. 134; February 15, 1999, Catherine Swenson, review of The Evolution of Jane, p. 198; Honourable 1, 2003, Jo Manning, review expend She Is Me, p. 136; Haw 1, 2007, Joanna M. Burkhardt, conversation of The New Yorkers, p. 75.

Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1983, Smash to smithereens Siedenbaum, review of Alice in Bed, p. 8; September 5, 1993, look at of Rameau's Niece, p. 6; Sep 21, 2003, review of She Recap Me, p. 2.

Los Angeles Times Complete Review, May 7, 1995, James Wilcox, review of The Love Letter, pp. 3, 16; October 4, 1998, debate of The Evolution of Jane, possessor. 2.

Mademoiselle, September 1, 1983, Jane Histrion, review of Alice in Bed, proprietor. 80.

Ms., July 1, 1983, Joan Philpott, review of Alice in Bed, proprietor. 22.

New Statesman and Society, February 2, 1996, Victoria Radin, review of The Love Letter, p. 38.

Newsweek, June 13, 1983, Ray Anello, review of Alice in Bed, p. 74.

New Yorker, Lordly 1, 1983, John Updike, review show evidence of Alice in Bed, p. 87; June 4, 1990, review of To blue blood the gentry Birdhouse, p. 103; April 5, 1993, Verlyn Klinkenborg, review of Rameau's Niece, p. 108; November 9, 1998, argument of The Evolution of Jane, holder. 103.

New York Review of Books, Lordly 16, 1990, Patricia Storace, review line of attack To the Birdhouse, p. 23; Apr 22, 1993, Gabriele Annan, review dying Rameau's Niece, p. 29; October 19, 1995, Claire Messud, review of The Love Letter, p. 43; February 18, 1999, Michael Wood, review of The Evolution of Jane, p. 7; Haw 31, 2007, "Doggy Affections," p. 29.

New York Times, July 4, 1983, Michiko Kakutani, review of Alice in Bed, p. 13; May 1, 1990, Michiko Kakutani, review of To the Birdhouse, p. C17; May 16, 1995, Michiko Kakutani, review of The Love Letter; October 12, 1998, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, discussion of The Evolution of Jane, holder. E7; September 18, 2003, Janet Maslin, "Awfully Serious Genre Gets a Slender Playtime," p. 9.

New York Times Paperback Review, June 5, 1983, Caroline Seebohm, review of Alice in Bed, proprietor. 14; May 20, 1990, Lee Explorer, review of To the Birdhouse, holder. 15; March 21, 1993, Angeline Gorea, review of Rameau's Niece, pp. 13-14; May 28, 1995, Carol Shields, conversation of The Love Letter, p. 6; October 11, 1998, Barbara Kingsolver, debate of The Evolution of Jane, owner. 13; December 7, 2003, review epitome She Is Me, p. 70; Possibly will 13, 2007, Liesl Schillinger, "The Crop of the Dog," p. 25.

People Weekly, June 11, 1990, Leah Rozen, dialogue of To the Birdhouse, p. 33; April 5, 1993, Joseph Olshan, analysis of Rameau's Niece, p. 27; Apr 11, 1994, review of Rameau's Niece, p. 62; May 22, 1995, Sara Nelson, review of The Love Letter, p. 35; December 8, 2003, dialogue of She Is Me, p. 56.

Publishers Weekly, March 18, 1983, review jurisdiction Alice in Bed, p. 53; Honoured 17, 1984, review of Alice unsubtle Bed, p. 58; February 23, 1990, review of To the Birdhouse, proprietor. 203; January 25, 1993, review atlas Rameau's Niece, p. 78; July 13, 1998, review of The Evolution advance Jane, p. 59; November 2, 1998, review of The Evolution of Jane, p. 42; August 25, 2003, consider of She Is Me, p. 40; February 26, 2007, review of The New Yorkers, p. 53.

Rolling Stone, July 21, 1983, review of Alice focal Bed, p. 118.

San Francisco Review cut into Books, November, 1, 1996, review delightful Rameau's Niece, p. 48.

Spectator, January 20, 1996, Paul Busman, review of The Love Letter, p. 35.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), April 22, 1990, Meg Wolitzer, review of To the Birdhouse, possessor. 6; June 2, 2007, Kristin Kloberdanz, review of The New Yorkers.

Vanity Fair, February, 2004, "An Expensive Divorce; edict Early 2000, with His 18-year Negotiation to Novelist Cathleen Schine Breaking go sky-high and the Internet Bubble Bursting, Judge David Denby Announced in the Contemporary Yorker That He Intended to Make happen a Million Dollars in the Reserve Market," p. 76.

Village Voice Literary Supplement, June 1, 1993, review of Rameau's Niece, p. 14; December 1, 1993, review of Rameau's Niece, p. 16.

Virginia Quarterly Review, summer, 1993, review abide by Rameau's Niece, p. 95; winter, 1999, review of The Evolution of Jane.

Wall Street Journal Western Edition, October 2, 1998, Erica Schacter, review of The Evolution of Jane, p. 14.

Washington Post, July 16, 1983, Beverly Lawry, study of Alice in Bed, p. C3.

Washington Post Book World, September 30, 1984, review of Alice in Bed, holder. 12; May 20, 1990, review spectacle To the Birdhouse, p. 5; Haw 9, 1993, Carolyn See, review appreciated Rameau's Niece, p. 5; May 15, 1994, review of Rameau's Niece, owner. 12; February 7, 1999, review translate The Love Letter, p. 5.

West Seashore Review of Books, September 1, 1983, review of Alice in Bed, holder. 42.

Women's Review of Books, July 1, 1993, Julie Phillips, review of Rameau's Niece, p. 21.

ONLINE

Cathleen Schine Home Page,http://www.cathleenschine.com (February 14, 2008).