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ChatChat - Claudia Cragg


Sep 15, 2008

In this September 2009 interview, author Francine Prose talks with Claudia Cragg about 'Goldengrove', an emotionally powerful novel about adolescent love and loss. Focusing on a young girl facing the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister, this masterful coming-of-age work is radiant with the possibility of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of teenage life. At the center of Francine Prose's profoundly moving new novel is a young girl facing the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister. As her parents drift toward their own risky consolations, thirteen-year-old Nico is left alone to grope toward understanding and clarity, falling into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's enigmatic boyfriend.

Over one haunted summer, Nico must face that life-changing moment when children realize their parents can no longer help them. She learns about the power of art, of time and place, the mystery of loss and recovery. But for all the darkness at the novel's heart, the narrative itself is radiant with the lightness of summer and charged by the restless sexual tension of teenage life

The New York Times bestselling Prose is author also of a number of other works including Reading Like a Writer and A Changed Man. Prose was born April 1, 1947, Brooklyn, New York) and, since March 2007, she has been the president of PEN American Center. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991.

She sat on the board of judges for the PEN/Newman's Own Award. Her novel, Blue Angel, a satire about sexual harassment on collegecampuses, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

She is a Visiting Professor of Literature at Bard College. One of her novels, Household Saints, was adapted for the cinema by Nancy Savoca. Another, The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical with the same title by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. It ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City in the fall of 2007.