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Cynthia Ozick <br>
Heir To The Glimmering World: A Novel, Author Reading <br>
Thursday, Jan. 20 4-6pm <br>
Slifka Center, 80 Wall Street<br>
Contact: joshua.gross@yale.edu<br><br>
<br>
The words that Cynthia Ozick commits to paper have the power to
cross<br>
over ethnic and religious lines and speak to people in a language
they<br>
both marvel at and understand. Normally recalcitrant critics have
been<br>
moved to sing her praises. John Sutherland of the New York Times
has<br>
written, “Cynthia Ozick is, for my money, the most accomplished and<br>
graceful literary stylist of our time.”<br><br>
In Ms. Ozick’s latest book, “Heir to the Glimmering World: A Novel,”
she<br>
continues to ask challenging questions about what it means to
belong,<br>
and considers the extent that who we are determines what we do. The<br>
narrator of this character driven, depression-era tale is Rose
Meadows,<br>
a resolute 18-year-old orphan. Virtually abandoned, Rose wanders into
a<br>
job with the Mitwisser family, German refugees in New York City.
Filling<br>
gaping holes in their household, Rose becomes a research assistant
to<br>
the father, a nurse to his oft-deranged, sequestered wife; and nanny
to<br>
their five children. With her trademark lyrical prose, gentle humor
and<br>
vivid imagery, Ozick paints a textured portrait of outsiders
rendered<br>
powerless, retreating into tightly coiled existences of scholarly<br>
rapture, guarded brazenness and even calculated lunacyall as a means
of<br>
refuting the bleakness of a harsh, chaotic world. <br><br>
As Jews celebrate their 350th anniversary in America this year,
Cynthia<br>
Ozick is the ideal writer to turn to, as her entire body of work
has<br>
embodied the strains, the sacrifices, the wonderment and the triumphs
of<br>
the American experience.<br><br>
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