Meet Me in the In-Between

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Description

Interwoven with exquisite passages of graphic memoir, Meet Me in the In-Between is bestselling author Bella Pollen's surprisingly tender, frequently funny and achingly poignant quest to keep on looking for the extraordinary in an ordinary life. Growing up the middle child of transatlantic parents, Bella Pollen never quite learnt how to belong. Restlessly criss-crossing the boundaries of family and freedom, safety and danger, home and away, she has sought but generally failed to contain an adventurous spirit within the narrow lines of convention - until, finding herself stymied in the in-between, she reluctantly concludes that to move forwards, she must take a good look at her past. Cue a bewitching journey, from her very English childhood in upper Manhattan, through an early marriage to the son of an alluring Italian Godfather, to the dusty border towns of Mexico where she falls in with a band of Pink Floyd-loving smugglers. Throughout all, Pollen grapples with relationships, motherhood, career ups and downs and a pathological fear of being boxed in.

Reviews

Bella Pollen creates magic * Vanity Fair *
A writer you need to read -- A. A. Gill
Pollen captivatingly mixes graphics with prose to tell of her upbringing, swinging back and forth between binaries (transatlantic homes, riches-to-rags love affairs). Think Eat, Pray, Love - finding yourself, laughing, and taking what you need even when it's not what you wanted - only cooler * Marie Claire *
Frequently disturbing, often very funny. Pollen has a gift for playing with her readers, teasing them, shocking them, having fun with their assumptions before shaking them out of their complacency to reveal underlying and often very moving profundities. The intimacy of Pollens prose invites inclusion into the most private conversations she has with herself, her self-mocking humour rippling through . . . unforgettable. * Daily Telegraph *
How to know who you truly are and what you can become With nothing firmly underfoot, Pollen pursues a quest for authenticity through unconventional and unpredictable encounters and thrives. Hers is a memoir of an indelible life full of incredible adventures. * Booklist *
Funny, risky, racy, stunningly visual, and beyond poignant, Bella Pollens offbeat memoir is a one-of-a-kind adventure start to finish. * Jenny McPhee, author of The Centre of Things' and 'A Man of No Moon' *
Pollen is an engagingly contradictory tangle . . . but its her propulsive push-pull relationship with home thats sure to resonate especially sharply with women . . . Poignant, beautifully written, an idiosyncratic memoir * Mail on Sunday *
Captivating * Tatler *
Meet me in the In-between is as off-beat as its author, blending memoir with beguiling and graphic novelistic interludes . . . A journey that buzzes and sparks with life and wit * The Lady *
Brava . . . Pollens account of bohemian family life and outrageous mafia-in-laws is funny, poignant and acute * The Spectator *
Meet Me in the In-Between displays the disjointedness of a life, how whims and flings dont make existenceor a womanany less meaningful. Its in the spaces among all these things that something magical breathes and resists capture. As Pollen illustrates in her sharp, nearly wry voice, it is not our memories that will lead us to an understanding of the self, but the act of maneuvering among them * The San Francisco Journal of Arts and Letter *
A rollicking memoir of the novelists double life and her demons * Womens Wear Daily USA *
A whimsical and at times very funny style. Pollen has a real talent for recreating scenes, characters and dialogue * Nudge *
Funny, startling and unexpectedly poignant * The New Statesman *
Pollen has a way with caustic description that evinces a love for the evocative qualities of language . . . From the beginning (she) revels in a self-absorption that should be off-putting, but her clever way with words is so self deprecating that she is immediately likeable * Santa Fe New Mexican *

A contemporary memoir should be honest, entertaining and bursting with life. Bella Pollen's Meet Me in the In-Between is all of this, and more: a work of art.

Author Bio

Bella Pollen is a writer and journalist who has contributed to a wide variety of publications, including the Sunday Telegraph, American Vogue and the Observer. She is the author of five novels, All About Men, Daydream Girl, Hunting Unicorns, Midnight Cactus and The Summer of the Bear and her illustrated memoir Meet Me in the In-Between. She lives in Ladbroke Grove, London.