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Absence Makes the Heart
This novel plunges the reader back to the experimental and enlightened London and Amsterdam of the late 1960s, where the heroine explores theatre, underground film, and men, recklessly chasing every experience which confirms her femininity.
- GenresFiction
157 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Lynne Tillman
114 books320 followersHere’s an Author��s Bio. It could be written differently. I’ve written many for myself and read lots of other people’s. None is right or sufficient, each slants one way or the other. So, a kind of fiction – selection of events and facts.. So let me just say: I wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old. That I actually do write stories and novels and essays, and that they get published, still astonishes me.
My news is that my 6th novel MEN AND APPARITIONS will appear in march 2018 from Soft Skull Press. It's my first novel in 12 years.
Each spring, I teach writing at University at Albany, in the English Dept., and in the fall, at The New School, in the Writing Dept.
I’ve lived with David Hofstra, a bass player, for many years. It makes a lot of sense to me that I live with a bass player, since time and rhythm are extremely important to my writing. He’s also a wonderful man.
As time goes by, my thoughts about writing change, how to write THIS, or why I do. There are no stable answers to a process that changes, and a life that does too. Writing, when I’m inhabiting its world, makes me happy, or less unhappy. I also feel engaged in and caught up in politics here, and in worlds farther away.
When I work inside the world in which I do make choices, I'm completely absorbed in what happens, in what can emerge. Writing is a beautiful, difficult relationship with what you know and don’t know, have or haven’t experienced, with grammar and syntax, with words, primarily, with ideas, and with everything else that’s been written.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 6, 2013
This book is very much about relationships, particularly about a woman lurching from one dreadful realtionship to another. I don't have much patience for that subject matter, so I didn't get a lot of enjoyment out of this book. The author has a strong style and is in control of her prose, so someone who has been in that situation, or who cares a lot about feminism in the context of modern heterosexual relationships may enjoy reading it.
October 4, 2023
Pretty mid prose, blogish, but describes 70s/80s art-worlders pretty well, and here and there a flash of real style
March 19, 2013
Halfway thru, I guess I'm abandoning this for now b/c I just got a new book in the mail that I'm excited to start tonight (Eating Chinese Food Naked). This book is hard to read, which I didn't expect, but the prose is sharp like everyone says it is—
It's just—it's got this cool-I'm-hanging-out-with-cool-people kind of feeling, very similar to reading Eileen Myles, in which the story is you following the narrator around, watching them talk to this person, have sex with that person, and make a huge number of references to films and things that you've never seen so all is lost and you're no longer that interested b/c you wonder why you care and what the story even is, somewhere not quite having the warmth (?) that keeps me reading—and absolutely loving—other stories that fit this same description. That previous sentence is not intended to sum up either writer but specifically it's re: "Other Movies", the story I read that made me decide to abandon the book. I do love recognizing the poets in Myles's work. I guess it's not a good time for me to read Lynne Tillman. I did enjoy "Weird Fucks", the first story, sort of. I just didn't enjoy the "fucks" I got to meet—
It's just—it's got this cool-I'm-hanging-out-with-cool-people kind of feeling, very similar to reading Eileen Myles, in which the story is you following the narrator around, watching them talk to this person, have sex with that person, and make a huge number of references to films and things that you've never seen so all is lost and you're no longer that interested b/c you wonder why you care and what the story even is, somewhere not quite having the warmth (?) that keeps me reading—and absolutely loving—other stories that fit this same description. That previous sentence is not intended to sum up either writer but specifically it's re: "Other Movies", the story I read that made me decide to abandon the book. I do love recognizing the poets in Myles's work. I guess it's not a good time for me to read Lynne Tillman. I did enjoy "Weird Fucks", the first story, sort of. I just didn't enjoy the "fucks" I got to meet—
July 31, 2007
The intelligence is there; the writing not so much. Some nice moments nevertheless:
"She looked into the mirror. Were she to report that it was cracked, one might conjure it, or be depressed by a weak metaphor. The mirror is not cracked. And stories do not occur outside thought. Stories, in fact, are contained within thought. It's only a story really should read, it's a way to think. She turned over and stroked her cat, whorefused to be held longer than thirty seconds. That was a record. She turned over and slept on her face. She wondered what it would do to her face but she slept that way anyway, just as she let her body go and didn't exercise, knowing what she was doing was not in her interest. She wasn't interested. It had come to that."
"She looked into the mirror. Were she to report that it was cracked, one might conjure it, or be depressed by a weak metaphor. The mirror is not cracked. And stories do not occur outside thought. Stories, in fact, are contained within thought. It's only a story really should read, it's a way to think. She turned over and stroked her cat, whorefused to be held longer than thirty seconds. That was a record. She turned over and slept on her face. She wondered what it would do to her face but she slept that way anyway, just as she let her body go and didn't exercise, knowing what she was doing was not in her interest. She wasn't interested. It had come to that."
December 31, 2008
One of my favorite books. It might be hard to find. Lynne Tillman is a scary-good fiction writer. Not always pleasant reading, but unforgettable.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews