Boundaries

by Roberta Silman

Overview

Are there really second chances? It is the 1970s and Mady Glazer is trying to hold herself and her three children together after the shocking death of her charismatic husband, David, in a plane crash. When they finally go on vacation to Racer's Cove at the eastern end of Long Island, they meet Hans Panneman, a bachelor and potter, who was brought up in Africa, whose father was an avid Nazi, and who escaped his earlier life by settling here and leading the quietest of lives. They could not be more different, more representative of "the other," as Mady is reminded by her extended Jewish family when she finds herself drawn to this quiet, puzzling man. Yet, love and ease sometimes come where we least expect them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504009621
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Publication date:	06/09/2015
Edition description:	Digital Original ed.
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Roberta Silman’s first story was in The New Yorker; other stories followed there, in The Atlantic, Redbook, McCall’s, Hadassah, VQR, The American Scholar and in many places here and abroad. Her books are Blood Relations, stories; three novels, Boundaries, The Dream Dredger, and Beginning the World Again: A Novel of Los Alamos; and two children’s books, Somebody Else’s Child and The Astronomers.
 
Born in Brooklyn, brought up on Long Island, Silman graduated with honors from Cornell Universityand has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence.
 
A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, she has won the National Magazine Award for Fiction twice. Two stories were read on Selected Shorts, two others won PEN Syndicated Fiction prizes, and several were cited in Best American Short Stories. Somebody Else’s Child won the Child Study Association Award; Blood Relations won honorable mentions for the PEN Hemingway and Janet Heidinger Kafka Prizes; Boundaries won honorable mention for the Kafka Prize; and The Dream Dredger and Beginning the World Again won Washington Irving Awards. Her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, VQR, The American Scholar, and World Books PRI. She reviews regularly for the online magazine The ArtsFuse.
 
Ms. Silman is married to structural engineer, Robert Silman, and they have three married children and five grandchildren.

Editorial Reviews

Nearly a totally moving, rare reading experience . . .” —Publishers Weekly
 
“Gentle middle-age love story . . . is steadied by Silman’s thoughtful attention to the slow evolution of love from a past of grief and alienation.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“A warm and gentle tale of the return of a widow to wholeness. A quiet unpressured story . . . of sane, attractive and intelligent people . . . a stream roaming in the woods . . .” —Nora Johnson,
The New York Times Book Review
 
“Roberta Silman is a graceful and patient writer, and she is able to make [Mady and Hans] agreeably unpredictable as they approach each other, back away, and approach again, unable to believe they have found a happy end to their unspeakable loneliness.” —The New Yorker
 
“In her first novel Silman manages satire and faith, fire and calm with force and delicacy . . . A splendid talent . . . She shows some remarkable strengths, not the least of which is her attentive familiarity with the setting she’s chosen. Tolstoy and Henry James would be writing about characters as sophisticated and engaged with life as her Mady and Hans if they were writing today.” —The Boston Globe

From the Publisher