Morning Pages
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected May 7, 2024
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
When her professional and family life collide, a playwright starts journaling every morning to push through her writer’s block in this laugh-out-loud and fresh take on family, friendship, and the chaos of midlife.
“[A] winning adult debut…” –Publishers Weekly
Elise Hellman was once heralded by audiences and critics as a “playwright to watch.” Then they forgot all about her. When a prestigious theater company unexpectedly offers her a generous commission to write a new play, she has an opportunity to turn her career around. With sixty-five days left until her deadline, Elise starts scribbling a few pages of stream-of-consciousness first thing every morning as a way to get over her writer’s block—a technique called Morning Pages, popularized in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.
What emerges is a witty confessional in which Elise chronicles her life with her teenage stoner son and her overbearing and eccentric mother, who is losing her memory but not her profanity. She writes about her lingering feelings for her ex-husband, her best friend who is acting oddly, and the confusing encounters she has with a handsome stranger in an elevator.
As she writes, the marked-up scenes from her play, Deja New, are revealed, as a story within the story.
Morning Pages is about what life throws at you when you’re trying to write. It is both a humorous exploration of the creative process and a relatable coming-of-age tale for the generation sandwiched between caring for their parents and caring for their kids.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Children's book author Feiffer (No Go Sleep!) centers her winning adult debut on a playwright floundering amid family drama and a pressing deadline. Elise Hellman jumps at the chance to write a new play to be helmed by a popular director. Though the script is due in just 65 days, Elise, who divorced her husband, Elliot, two years earlier and raises their unmotivated and withdrawn teen son, Marsden, takes the job while contending with pressure from a friend to lose her "divorce virginity" to a handsome stranger and interruptions from her mother, Trudy. Elsie has made a habit of keeping her distance from Trudy, who taught Marsden curse words when he was in kindergarten, but it's harder now that Trudy is showing signs of dementia. As Elsie writes her play, which is about a middle-aged woman whose bickering parents move in with her just as she reunites with a love interest from college, she processes various elements of her emotional baggage, such as lingering feelings for Elliot and Trudy's uncertain future. Feiffer endears readers to her overextended protagonist by capturing Elise's frustration at being unable to communicate with her family members and the relief of her eventual creative breakthrough. Those in the mood for a lighthearted story that deals with some darker family themes will appreciate this.
