Inside this month's issue of BookPage

January 2004
In This Issue

FIRST PERSON
January BookPage interviews:

Anne Tyler: The Pulitzer Prize-winning author captures the dramas of everyday life

Tyler's remarkable abilities are on full display in her 16th book, The Amateur Marriage. Quite simply, this new novel ranks among Tyler's best to date. It tells the story of Michael Anton and Pauline Barclay, who meet by accident in a Baltimore neighborhood at the outbreak of World War II, marry hastily, raise a family and live with the consequences of an unhappy marriage. The novel follows their lives into old age, ending shortly after another national cataclysm, the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

John Pollack: Fulfillment of a childhood dream

Orange crates sealed with bumper stickers float, but not for long. So John Pollack discovered when he built his first boat at age six. Far from being discouraged, the young boy decided that someday, he'd build a boat from something that couldn't sink: corks. Over the next 25 years, Pollack pursued other dreams, working as a White House speechwriter and a foreign correspondent in Spain, but he never stopped saving corks. His new book, Cork Boat, is a lively, memorable account of the attempt to make his dream a reality.

Screenwriter Elisabeth Robinson creates a moving debut novel of a sister's correspondence

Meet Rebecca Doughty

Jilliane Hoffman tells the tale of a rape victim who turns the tables on her attacker in a powerful legal thriller

Meet Belva Plain

Zizou Corder, aka mother-daughter writing team Louisa and Isabel Young, turns bedtime stories into a magical tale for children

FEATURES

SPOTLIGHT: Self Help books to help you make a change

Books on weight loss help shape a new you for the new year

Well Read: Thomas Mallon's take on the Jazz Age

Faulkner Fox tells the truth about the balancing act of motherhood in Behind the Book

Health: Use the new year to launch a new fitness routine

Dying for Publicity: Bounced from NPR, an author ponders the obits

FICTION

The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

Something Rising (light and swift) by Haven Kimmel

Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali

The Havana Room by Colin Harrison