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INTERVIEWS
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A Visit to Powell's Bookstore
"In 1996, Goodman's "story cycle," The Family Markowitz, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Two years later, her first novel, Kaaterskill Falls was a National Book Award finalist. Now – surprise, surprise – her second novel, Paradise Park, is busy hoarding rave reviews. Add to her resumé degrees from Harvard and Stanford. Now consider that she's a mother of three. And she's not yet thirty-five years old. Even before the publication of her latest novel it was enough to make Publishers Weekly wonder, "How can this vivacious and unpretentious young woman have accomplished so much so soon?"
Paradise Park tracks the spiritual adventures of Sharon Spiegelman from the fleabag Waikiki hotel room where we meet her, broke and alone now that her boyfriend has "run off with a chick on her way to Fiji," to a pot farm in the jungle (naked, mostly), a monastery, a couples workshop (alone), The Greater Love Salvation Church ("I think I was a little bit mixed up between grace and orgasms," Sharon confides), university classrooms, a Torah school in Jerusalem... Through it all, she remains a passionate, opinionated seeker, though in fact her opinions tend to change dramatically from one week to the next.
Let's be frank, shall we? Sharon has a strong personality.
"You've got to pity the poor soul who gets stuck sitting next to her on the bus," Jennifer Schuessler wrote in the New York Times. Sharon is "a character we never quite like, an annoying, self-righteous heroine who verges on foolishness," the writer Alison Baker noted, "yet one whose spiritual adventures we follow avidly for 360 pages."
Goodman, unlike her narrator, giggles in a kind of way that makes you wonder why people don't giggle more. Something about her draws people near. She wasn't in Powell's thirty seconds before a woman tugging at the elbow of the author's coat interrupted our conversation to compliment her on her hat."
by Dave Weich
Transcript of Allegra's Conversation at Powells
Ticket to 'Paradise':
A Talk With Allegra Goodman
"I caught up with Allegra Goodman at Burdick's Café in Harvard Square. She has the look of a prodigy — quick, bright, preternaturally young. Cheerful and generous, like someone life has treated fairly, she wears the name Allegra well. Since she is famously capable of eliciting empathy for diverse characters, my intention was to start by discussing a virtue that fiction and psychiatry value in common. Sharon Spiegelman appeared first in a short story, 'Onionskin,' and I asked how the author's task — making the reader care — differed in the writing of the story and of the novel..."
Read the Interview at The Foward
NPR INTERVIEW
Reviewer Alan Cheuse tells us about a new novel by Allegra Goodman: Paradise Park.
Listen to the audio at the NPR site.
Live Event with the
Christian Science Monitor
Topic is Paradise Park
EXCERPT: "My father, Lenn Goodman, is indeed a philsopher, and I'm sure philosophical querries permeate all my work. He has inspired me in many ways. First, by his deep interest in humanistic questions--which are at heart also novelistic questions, second, by his work ethic, and third, by his love of literature and art."
Transcript from August 14, 2001
Coming of age on the rollicking
road to Paradise
INTERVIEW BY ALDEN MUDGE
EXCERPT: "You can have a transformative experience, but you still have the same problems. You wake up the next morning and you're still the same person," Goodman points out. "I was fascinated by the idea that there are some parts of your identity that stay the same no matter what. The book takes place over 20 years, but Sharon is still Sharon at the end of the book. She's really blossomed in many ways, but she's still Sharon. What changes and what stays the same and how those things work together, all of that really fascinated me."
Read the Article Here
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