Edgy writers

By Meredith Deliso

This is for all you moms who are more Peg Bundy than Carol Brady.

Edgy Mother’s Day, a reading series that celebrates writing about motherhood, and the feisty moms who write it, returns to the Old Stone House on May 19 for another evening of witty, serious, touching, satirical, and overall illuminating pieces.

“They’ll rock you, sock you, make you laugh, cry, cheer and look at motherhood in a whole mother way,” said Louise Crawford, who writes the website Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn and curated the series with Sophia Romero.

This time around, the “edgy” lineup consists of novelists Paola Corso and Romero, graphic novelist Jennifer Hayden, and essayist Nancy McDermott, who will give their unique perspectives on motherhood, with a requisite dose of snark.

“I am fascinated by the peculiar culture of parenthood today — it is ripe with comedic potential,” said McDermott, a Park Slope-based writer who’s a regular contributor to the Park Slope Parents website. “Things like keeping journals of every lurid detail of our baby’s bowel movements or talking to our toddlers in public about terribly worthy things, like human rights or Beethoven, in a Stepford Momish voice as if we were being secretly filmed by the selection committee for mother of the year. God knows I’ve done all that — and worse.”

Edgy Moms reading at the Old Stone House [336 Third St. at Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, (718) 768-3195], May 19 at 8 pm. Tickets $5. For info, visit brooklynreadingworks.com.

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A visit from Jennifer Egan

By Meredith Deliso

The last thing Jennifer Egan wants is for you to get tired of her.

But since her book “A Visit from the Goon Squad” came out last June, the Fort Greene writer fears that she has been on a constant book tour to support the praised piece of fiction.

“It did not sell very well [at first], though it got really good reviews, so I felt like it really had to continue to support it,” said Egan. “In another situation, I might have just said, ‘Enough, I’m going to let it sink or swim on its own.’ I felt I couldn’t do that with his one.”

That effort — her “endless babbling,” as she calls it — seems to have paid off: the book is in its 11th printing, made numerous year end top-10 lists and, just this month, it won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle award for fiction, beating out the much-hyped “Freedom” by a non-Brooklynite named Franzen.

The Circle praised the experimental form of Egan’s third novel — her most ambitious, inventive piece to date — as it follows intersecting characters in the music industry, including an aging record exec, Lou; his protégé, Bennie; his troubled assistant, Sasha; and her children, whose chapters are told in surprisingly moving PowerPoint slides. It’s a tale that spans decades, jumping around from present day New York to 1970s San Francisco to a dystopian future — and is one as much about time (that cruel goon in question) as it is the music industry.

“The book is about time, and time and music are so interwoven. We walk around awash in our own past, listening to songs that meant a lot to us at certain points,” said Egan. “As a journalist, I had always wanted to learn more about the music industry, but I never did. It was just a yen to write about this world that was unfulfilled in the nonfiction realm.”

Now that she’s gotten that out of her system, Egan is looking to get back into her next big project — a novel about the women who worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. But not before she does a bit more babbling, including two readings in Brooklyn in one week — at BookCourt tonight and the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday.

“I’m keenly aware you can’t do this forever, or you will become deeply boring,” said Egan. “I’m happy to do it a bit longer, then I think I’m going to have to close my mouth for several years and go back to what I do — which is write.”

Jennifer Egan at BookCourt [163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875-3677], March 28 at 7 pm. Free. For info, visit www.bookcourt.org; also at the Brooklyn Academy of Music [651 Fulton St. near between Rockwell and Ashland places in Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100], March 31 at 6:30 pm as part of its “Eat, Drink and Be Literary” series. Tickets $50 (includes dinner, wine, tax and tip). For info, visit www.bam.org.

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'Married' to it

By Meredith Deliso

To say Emma Straub is busy is an understatement.

A typical day may find the writer making posters through M + E, the printing business she runs with her husband out of their Prospect Lefferts Gardens studio, volunteering at the non-profit Girls Write Now, and, of course, writing.

Over the past five years or so, she’s managed to eke out a collection of witty, sharply observed short stories, whose recurring themes of love, loss and alienation belie the author’s sunny disposition. That compilation, “Other People We Married,” which includes her acclaimed novella, “Fly-Over State,” comes out next month, and she celebrates with a reading at BookCourt this Thursday.

Oh, did we mention she works there, too?      

“Whenever I get to do anything at BookCourt, it’s like extra fun,” said Straub, who usually stands out at the Cobble Hill bookstore thanks to her vintage hair accessories. “It’s like a giant dollop of whipped cream. I love that I get to work there. It’s almost too wonderful.”

And there’s that sunny disposition.

Emma Straub reads from “Other People We Married” at BookCourt [163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875-3677], Jan. 27 at 7 pm. For info, visit www.bookcourt.org.

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'Fiddler' redux

By Meredith Deliso

Finally, “Fiddler on the Roof” gets a 21st-century reboot.

In “The Cosmopolitans,” Prospect Heights-based writer Nadia Kalman uses the iconic musical as a launching pad for a story about a Russian family that flees the Soviet Union and lands, of all places, in Connecticut.

“I watched ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ a couple of times growing up in Stamford, and, as an immigrant from that part of the world, it seemed to reflect how people saw us as immigrants,” said Kalman. “When we came over, people seemed to think we came from a shtetl. That always seemed interesting to me.”

“The Cosmopolitans” follows the Molochnik family and the marriage of its three daughters — a modern downsize from the musical’s five. It boldly begins by referencing Tolstoy’s oft-cited line, “Happy families are all alike,” and this inevitably unhappy family is comprised of one daughter who can’t help channeling the voice of Brezhnev, another who marries an exchange student from Bangladesh, making for some fun cross-cultural satire, and a third who finds herself engaged to — God forbid — a snooty Manhattanite.

Like Tevye, their poor, outnumbered father can’t even begin to understand them.

The title suggests the family’s attempt at worldliness, as well as makes a nod to Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan campaign.

“I thought the title embodied the cross-cultural things going on in the book,” said Kalman. “I also thought it was funny that it was also the name of a fun drink here in the U.S.”

They certainly didn’t have those in Tevye’s world.  

Nadia Kalman reads from “The Cosmopolitans” at Sunny’s Bar [253 Conover St. between Beard and Reed streets in Red Hook, (718) 625-8211], Dec. 5 at 3 pm. Free. For info, visit www.sunnysredhook.com.

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Paul Auster heads south to 'Sunset Park'

By Meredith Deliso

Brooklyn has its hold on Paul Auster.

The New York-centric writer has a habit for setting his stories in the borough, including his 1995 movie, “Smoke,” set in a Park Slope candy store, and his earlier novel, “Brooklyn Follies,” also set in Park Slope, among a cast of familiar characters (BPMs, anyone?).

In his newest novel, Auster moves a bit farther south. “Sunset Park” follows a group of young squatters — a musician, artist, grad student and somewhat lost but enigmatic individual, Miles Heller — who hole up in an abandoned building during the early onset of the recession. 

This wouldn’t be an Auster novel without contemplations of failure, chance, loneliness, coincidence (in this case, all the characters’ familiarity with the early Hollywood film, “The Best Years of Our Lives”), and, naturally, place.

“I was thinking about the idea of dispossession. I had an image in my head of someone being thrown out of the place where he lives, just kicked out on the street,” said Auster. “As I was thinking about the story, I picked up my head and looked around, and low and behold, all across America, people are being booted out of their house because of mortgage foreclosure.”

Auster only had to pick up his head again and look around to find further inspiration, this time for the house his characters made their impermanent home.

“I took a lot of walks around Sunset Park, and one day, I came across this odd little wooden structure, facing Green-Wood Cemetery, on a very deserted block. I thought, this is just the kind of place people could try to get into and squat in,” said Auster. “And it would be the kind of neighborhood where I think something like this would be possible. It’s a rather spread out, downtrodden part of Brooklyn. That house for me was the center of the book, and I just love the words — ‘Sunset Park’ — they’re very evocative to me.”

Auster took a few pictures of the building for reference while he wrote his book — which was a good thing, as it has since been torn down — and describes it thusly: “a dopey little two-story wooden house with a roofed-over front porch, looking for all the world like something that had been stolen from a farm on the Minnesota prairie and plunked down by accident in the middle of New York.” 

For the past 25 years, Auster has lived not far from Sunset Park, in Park Slope (“That would not be a place to squat,” he says. “You couldn’t get away with it there”). He’s called Brooklyn home for even longer, moving around from Carroll Gardens to Cobble Hill, not far from where he’ll read tomorrow, at BookCourt.

“Henry [Zook] had just started BookCourt when I lived in Cobble Hill,” said Auster. “It’s wonderful to see how it’s expanded over the years, and how he’s turned it into one of the best bookstores in the city.”

Similarly, over the years, Auster has become recognized as one of the foremost writers in the city, thanks to the strength of “The New York Trilogy” and the absurdist “Moon Palace.”

“Sunset Park,” though it uses a more straightforward form than his more classic works that play with form, is sure to please the Auster fan, thanks to compelling, fully realized characters that you wind up caring about — well, enough to spend 300 pages with. And, for those who also like the writer’s keen observations of Brooklyn, it probably won’t be his last borough-centric piece, either.

“I’ve been living here for so long, it’s my place now. I know it better than anywhere else,” said Auster. “I don’t have any plans to move anywhere else. My wife and I say, we’ll stay in our house until the day we can no longer get up and down the stairs.”

Paul Auster at BookCourt [163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875-3677], Nov. 18 at 7 pm. Free. For info, visit www.bookcourt.org.

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Read an excerpt from Nicole Krauss's latest

Here's the beginning of Nicole Krauss's latest work, "Great House":

ALL RISE

Talk to him.

Your Honor, in the winter of 1972 R and I broke up, or I should say he broke up with me. His reasons were vague, but the gist was that he had a secret self, a cowardly, despicable self he could never show me, and that he needed to go away like a sick animal until he could improve this self and bring it up to a standard he judged deserving of company. I argued with him—I’d been his girlfriend for almost two years, his secrets were my secrets, if there was something cruel or cowardly in him I of all people would know—but it was useless. Three weeks after he’d moved out I got a postcard from him (without a return address) saying that he felt our decision, as he called it, hard as it was, had been the right one, and I had to admit to myself that our relationship was over for good.

Things got worse then for a while before they got better. I won’t go into it except to say that I didn’t go out, not even to see my grandmother, and I didn’t let anyone come to see me, either. The only thing that helped, oddly, was the fact that the weather was stormy, and so I had to keep running around the apartment with the strange little brass wrench made especially for tightening the bolts on either side of the antique window frames—when they got loose in windy weather the windows would shriek. There were six windows, and just as I finished tightening the bolts on one, another would start to howl, so I would run with the wrench, and then maybe I would have a half hour of silence on the only chair left in the apartment. For a while, at least, it seemed that all there was of the world was that long rain and the need to keep the bolts fastened. When the weather finally cleared, I went out for a walk. Everything was flooded, and there was a feeling of calm from all that still, reflecting water. I walked for a long time, six or seven hours at least, through neighborhoods I had never been to before and have never been back to since. By the time I got home I was exhausted but I felt that I had purged myself of something.

Reprinted from GREAT HOUSE by Nicole Krauss. Copyright (c) 2010 by Nicole Krauss. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 

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Krauss's latest 'Great' work

By Meredith Deliso

For years, Nicole Krauss’s latest story has been staring her in the face.

The author of the wildly successful “The History of Love” spends most of her time writing at her desk — a custom-built giant that she inherited when she moved into her Park Slope brownstone about eight years ago.

“I never really liked it — it’s really ugly and overbearing,” said Krauss. “The only way to get rid of it would be by chopping it up, which seemed to me sad, a waste. I just continued to write at this thing.”

In 2007, Krauss published a short story in Harper’s, “From the Desk of Daniel Varsky,” a story about inheritance that she realized had its origins in her own desk.

“I was writing about the burden of inheritance — emotional inheritance — that had come from this owner,” said Krauss.

Once published, Krauss realized she wasn’t finished with that story, and kept returning to it. This month, she publishes her third novel, “Great House,” a National Book Award finalist that tells an interweaving story of several characters — the daughter of a Chilean poet named Daniel Varsky, who disappeared at the hands of Pinochet’s secret police, a reclusive American novelist, an antiques dealer in Jerusalem, a London man caring for his dying wife — who are all connected by this one desk and the secrets it contains. It’s an enthralling, thrilling read about memory and loss.

Those acquainted with Krauss’s last novel will find the plot device familiar — multiple stories woven together and brought together by a literary item, which, in her last novel, was another book called “The History of Love.”

“In all of my books, the characters are on the whole very solitary, and it’s very hard for them to communicate with others or make themselves be seen or known,” said Krauss. “I think it’s no accident that my kind of solution or my hope, the place that allows for the greatest possible chance at that full communication, is literature. The effort to express oneself through writing is one that has led my life, really.”

That’s still the case, even after an international bestselling novel, numerous awards and being named as one of the New Yorker’s best 20 authors under the age of 40 this past year (another was her husband, the greatest writer of his generation, Jonathan Safran Foer — talk about a literary power couple). But she’s also figured out how to guard against what she calls “an erosion of self-consciousness.”

“Keeping one’s values straight and clear as a writer is an important thing,” said Krauss. “The success that I had with ‘The History of Love’ took me by surprise. It’s not something I take as a kind of norm. So many writers that I love [Bruno Schulz, Saul Bellow, Thomas Burnhard] did not have huge audiences, and yet their books are some of the greatest ever written. I try to remind myself, as wonderful as that is, as deep a pleasure as it gives me to have many readers, ultimately, it isn’t the goal in the work.”

Still, “Great House” shouldn’t disappoint for fans of “The History of Love,” which, like its predecessor, is a sweeping epic that reinvents the fiction form, and is as witty as it is devastating.

After devoting the last three years to “Great House,” Krauss isn’t ready to even think about writing just yet, either.

“A novel takes so much out of one. Everything I have goes into it,” said Krauss. “When it’s finished, there’s a kind of emptiness that follows, and it takes a while to fill up again.”

For now, she enjoys taking her and Foer’s young children to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, one of her favorite places in Brooklyn, to the playground at the new Pier 6 in Brooklyn Heights, or out around Red Hook.

“I live in Park Slope, but I love Red Hook,” said Krauss. “I feel like when I’m there, I’m in a small fishing village, in some other part of the country.”

When she’s ready to write again, the desk — her inherited burden — will be waiting.

“I haven’t chopped it up yet,” said Krauss.

Nicole Krauss reads from “Great House” at the Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch [Flatbush Avenue at Eastern Parkway in Grand Army Plaza in Park Slope, (718) 230-2100], Oct. 16 at 4 pm; and at Congregation Beth Elohim [274 Garfield Pl. at Eighth Avenue in Park Slope, (718) 768-3814], Nov. 18 at 8 pm. Both are free. For info, visit www.nicolekrauss.com.

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Myla's favorite's

By Adam Warner

Myla Goldberg is a Brooklyn writer, but no, she doesn’t live in Fort Greene, Park Slope or Boerum Hill. For the past six years, she’s called Kensington home, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

“If I was single and living in Kensington, I would be miserable. But it’s great to have a family here,” said Goldberg, a mother of two young girls. “There’s not much of a book scene in Kensington, but that’s fine. I can get to other parts to do that sort of thing if I wanted to. But to be honest, I don’t do it that often, anyway. That’s not the kind of person I am.”

Indeed, Goldberg is a big fan of “nerdy German board games” like Settlers of Katan and watching old French noir films. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get out in Kensington. To follow, she shares with us some of her favorite places and why.

  

Brancaccio’s Food Shop

“Joe Brancaccio’s $6 whole roasted chicken stuffed with lemon, garlic, and herbs, is one of the best take-out deals in Brooklyn. He also does a great tapenade and a three-cheese mac and cheese with truffle oil, which he sells by the pound along with all his other homemade prepared foods. Plus, he carries Chinotto, an obscure Italian soda that I’m kind of addicted to.”

Brancaccio’s Food Shop [3011 Fort Hamilton Pkwy. between Third and Second streets, (718) 435-1997].

Monk Vintage Thrift Shop

“A genuine thrift store with genuine thrift store prices, and good music to boot. There’s always something interesting in here hiding in the racks, and I never feel like I’m not cool enough to set foot inside.”

Monk Vintage Thrift Shop [579 Fifth Ave. between 16th Street and Prospect Avenue, (718) 788-2950].

Green-Wood Cemetery

“Reading the gravestones in here is like sitting down with a really intense short story collection. The inscriptions and the dates of people’s births and deaths provide surprisingly in-depth family sagas, as well as a lot of unsolved mysteries. Not to mention all the spectacular trees.”

Green-Wood Cemetery [777 Fifth Ave. at 28th Street, (718) 768-3333].

Coots at Prospect Park Lake

“A coot is a small black water bird with a white beak, and there’s generally a few of them swimming among the ducks and geese at the lake. When one dives underwater to look for food, it’s this whole aquatic Marx Brothers routine, where it disappears beneath the water’s surface, and then pops up somewhere completely different, usually displacing a duck in the process. Think Harpo and Chico, if Harpo was a coot and Chico was a mallard. If you ever need a little cheering up, visit the coots.”

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Remember this - Myla Goldberg is the 'It' girl of literature

By Meredith Deliso and Adam Warner

When she was 10 years old, Myla Goldberg threw a pair of scissors at her friend. It wasn’t her best moment.

A few years ago, more than two decades later, the author found herself remembering that incident, and still felt pretty bad about it, so during Yom Kippur, she looked up the friend to atone for her sin. 

Turns out, the friend didn’t remember it happening at all, but accepted the apology anyway.

“It was this great amnestic moment,” said Goldberg. “We all subconsciously edit our lives, and you never know what random thing might bring something back.”

It’s moments like that that helped inspire the latest novel from Goldberg, who catapulted to literary fame 10 years ago with her debut, “Bee Season.”

“The False Friend,” out this month on Doubleday, focuses on a successful woman living in Chicago who, after 20 years, returns to her hometown to confess the role she played in the disappearance of a childhood friend, an assumed victim of abduction. All her life, she’s lied about what really happened, blocking the traumatic memory, only to face the consequences of confronting her family, friends, and a past she had come to forget.

The result is a book that explores aging, the unreliability of memory, and the truths we accept or reject. It’s thematically linked to the childhood trauma and remorse of Stephen King’s “It” — without the blood, gore or clowns.

“We all used to be someone else in one way or another,” said Goldberg. “It’s a weird sort of feeling to go back to where you’re from and face who you were.” 

This isn’t the first time Goldberg has put her memory in a time machine.

“Both in this novel and my previous, ‘Wickett’s Remedy,’ there is an interest in the fallibility of memory,” said Goldberg, whose previous novel was set during the influenza pandemic of 1918. (Don’t remember that bit of history? Exactly.) 

Both novels are dramatic departures from her debut book, “Bee Season,” a seemingly simple story about a girl, a spelling bee and its catastrophic effects on her family that put Goldberg on the literary map (having Hollywood turn it into a movie wasn’t bad, either). 

“I basically won the literary lottery,” said Goldberg. “The lifestyle I have now — I can be a full-time writer — is due entirely to the fact that my first book did extremely well. It’s extremely gratifying.”

The hard part was how to follow that up, though the author feels at peace with people’s expectations as she celebrates her third novel. In fact, she’s pretty distanced from the borough’s literary scene, save for her infrequent, low-stakes poker games with the likes of Colson Whitehead, Darin Strauss and Jonathan Lethem, “before he flew the coop.” 

“There’s a very vibrant arts scene in Brooklyn, but I don’t feel like I have any scene,” said Goldberg, who’s perfectly content playing board games at her Kensington home, seeing film retrospectives at BAM and playing the occasional gig with her art-punk band, the Walking Hellos. 

After spending the last five years working on her new novel, she’s also content to take a little breather from writing. Whether or not her next novel continues to explore the facets of memory — that remains to be seen.

“Certain issues stick with authors whether or not they want them to,” said Goldberg. “Memory might be mine.”

Myla Goldberg reads from “The False Friend” at Book Court [163 Court St. between Pacific and Dean streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 875-3677], Oct. 7 at 7 pm. Free. For info, visit www.bookcourt.org.

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Sad comic

By Adam Warner

Josh Neufeld was just another comic book artist until Hurricane Katrina put him on the bestseller list.

Neufeld was one of thousands of volunteers who rushed to waterlogged Crescent City in the wake of the disaster five years ago — but he’s the only one who came back with a blog, a self-published book, and a gripping graphic novel, “A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.”

“I was very shocked and upset with what I saw happening down there,” said Neufeld, a longtime artist for the renowned comic series, “American Splendor,” and author of the prior graphic novel, “A Few Perfect Hours.”

“All those people trapped in the city and the lack of government intervention galvanized me into doing something.”

Something first morphed into a blog, and then a collection of entries, called “Katrina Came Calling,” which led to the well-received the new autobiographical graphic novel.

Neufeld’s work as a Red Cross disaster response worker feeding hurricane-stricken citizens remains front and center in “A.D.,” an eye-opening tale of destruction and human perseverance familiar to anyone who read Neufeld’s popular blog.

“A.D.” is filled with sadness, but also the resilience of what Neufeld calls the “colorful characters” of New Orleans. It started as a web comic, but went on to become a New York Times bestseller shortly after its hardcover release in 2009.

It’s now out in paperback, and Greenlight Bookstore is heralding the event with a reading tonight.

“There’s a heavy readership of graphic novels, and Josh will definitely host an exciting event,” said Rebecca Fitting, who co-wons the shop. “ ‘A.D.’ got a lot of attention when it was released.”

Josh Neufeld at Greenlight Bookstore [686 Fulton St. between S. Elliott Place and S. Portland Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 246-0200]. Sept. 20 at 7:30 pm. Free. For info, visit abookstoreinbrooklyn.blogspot.com.

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Read a Ghita

Brooklyn is Ghita Schwarz’s happy pill.

“I love living in Brooklyn, period,” said the Fort Greene-based author. “I just love biking and walking around. I’m very happy living here, and for me it’s easier to write when I’m happy.”

The borough is definitely doing the trick. A demanding day job as a civil rights lawyer hasn’t stopped Schwarz from completing her first novel, “Displaced Persons,” an epic tale of exiled Polish Jews who create new lives for themselves in New York after the Holocaust.

Schwarz didn’t have to look too far for inspiration — her parents are Polish immigrants who sought refuge in the city after World War II.

“A lot of the voice in the book is the voice of people I’ve heard my whole life,” said Schwarz, who celebrates the release of her debut novel at Fort Greene’s Greenlight Bookstore on Aug. 30 (see her discuss it in the clip below).

The author spent years developing that voice, writing in the early morning before work, late into the night after, and spending vacations intensively crafting her novel.

An often-haunting tale of survival, “Displaced Persons” follows an ad-hoc family living in a post-war refugee camp in Germany to adjusting to life in 1960s America to exploring ways to memorialize their history at the turn of the century. It’s heavy stuff, but not lacking in humor or hope.

With her new novel fresh on shelves, the author is already at work on her next piece of fiction, and she doesn’t have to look too far for motivation.

“One of the awesome things about riding the subway to work is everyone has a book or Kindle or iPad,” said Schwarz. “It’s really inspiring as a writer to be somewhere where you can see with your own eyes every day that the book is alive and well.”

Ghita Schwarz at Greenlight Bookstore [686 Fulton St. at S. Portland Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 246-0200], Aug. 30 at 7:30 pm. For info, visit www.abookstoreinbrooklyn.blogspot.com.

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'Blind' love

By Damian Harris-Hernandez

A beautiful and recently married Italian dame is going blind, but nobody believes her except a nutty inventor. In order to help her overcome her disability, he devises a novel machine: the typewriter.

Passion, adultery and the imagination run naked in “The Blind Contessa’s New Machine,” the first book by Fort Greene author Carey Wallace.

Based loosely on the love affair between Countess Carolina Fantoni and inventor Pelligrino Turri, the story is what the author, who reads from her debut novel tonight at Greenlight Bookstore, located right around the corner from her apartment, describes as “historical fantasy.”

The typewriter’s racy history accidentally fell into Wallace’s lap one day during an unrelated Google search. Instantly, the writer knew she had the makings of a book. She began typing it (yes, on a typewriter) three years ago at a rural Michigan arts retreat, which she founded 10 years ago to bring city artists to the country.

In the story, it first appears that the countess must choose between her husband and the inventor. But “The Blind Contessa” is not your typical bodice-ripper. Wallace allows Carolina to choose beyond the men by finding a place of her own within her imagination.

“It’s about invention of every kind: lies, dreams, technology,” says Wallace. “The triumph of the imagination and the way it fails us.”

Carey Wallace at Greenlight Bookstore [686 Fulton St. at S. Portland Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 246-0200], July 29 at 7:30 pm. For info, visit www.abookstoreinbrooklyn.blogspot.com.

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