The Ballad Of The Black And Blue Mind: A Novel

(Hardback)

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Dr. Estelle Berman is a distinguished psychiatrist who lives and practices on the Upper West Side. She observes her own decline with much the same acceptance with which she observes the idiosyncrasies of her patients, some of whom she likes more than others. Her patients are Justine, the movie star, and the daughter of a colleague; Edith Forman, who is very large and writes poems; and Anna, a college student whose parents are both well-published academics, who cuts herself. There is also her own son Gerald, who has never been close to Estelle as he was to her late husband.

Reviews

Praise for Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind

"InBallad of the Black and Blue Mind, Anne Roiphe has given us an up-close portrait of an insular and rarely glimpsed world,serving up a memorable cast of characters with uncommon verve and wisdom. This is as engagingand moving a novel as I've read in a long time." Daphne Merkin, author of The Fame Lunches

"In laying bare some tribal mores of life and work in a tight-knit psychoanalytic community, Anne Roiphe soon comes upon her real subject, the thwarted love between parents and children, caught between hope and disappointment, a prey to neglect, misunderstanding, and helpless apprehension. Her writing is alive with unsparing insight and keen feeling."Morris Dickstein, author of Gates of Eden and Dancing in the Dark

Praise for Art and Madness

"To capture the spirit of those prefeminist days Ms. Roiphe ... must write intelligently about a time when, at least in matters of love, sex, marriage, motherhood, career and literary hero worship, she was not very smart at all. Art and Madness accomplishes all this ... Ms. Roiphe is sharply perceptive about the flesh-and-blood people around her. And she is witty about the ones who live in her imagination." The New York Times

"Roiphes sharp, dazzling memoir of her literary youth in late 1950s and early 1960s New York City contains a dark story of untenable marriages, alcoholism, and outrageous sexism She is a masterly writer: her work presents vivid, priceless snapshots of the roiling era of Communist hysteria, faddish homosexuality, male privilege, and the heartbreaking fragility of talented men and their dreams of fame." Publishers Weekly

Praise for Fruitful: A Real Mother

"Her riff on motherhood is passionate, lyrical, witty, insightful, commonsensical and off the wall. It will evoke shudders of recognition from anyone who has cared for a child." Emily MacFarquhar, The New York Times Book Review

Author Bio

Writer, essayist, and journalistANNE ROIPHEis known and revered for such novels asUp the Sandbox,1185 Park Avenue, andLovingkindness, and for her memoirs- Art and Madness and Epilogue. In addition to her eighteen fiction and non-fiction books, she has written articlesfor The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Elle,among others, and for many years she wrote columns forThe New York Observer andfor The Jerusalem Report. Her book,Fruitful, was a finalist for the National Book Award.