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by Marian Thurm
A complex family drama with a Manhattan family court judge at its center.
I Don't Know How to Tell You This focuses on Judge Rachel Sugarman and her life both inside and outside the courtroom. Rachel is part of a close Jewish family whose lives are marked by significant emotional challenges, including the painful recognition that her beloved husband is slowly being diminished by memory loss, and the past trauma of her mother-in-law, a prickly Holocaust survivor who, in old age, continues to struggle with her grief.
Rachel's career as a judge and the power she wields in her courtroom offer an intimate look at a woman navigating what is still, in the 21st century, a profession most often dominated by men. The novel explores the very topical issues of child and spousal abuse, which color the dark undercurrent of the courtroom scenes. And though it reflects serious issues, there is very clearly a pitch-black comic sensibility at work throughout the novel. By turns sad and touching and quirkily humorous, I Don't Know How To Tell You This is vintage Marian Thurm.
"[W]ith heartbreaking clarity and profound compassion...Thurm's spot-on thumbnail portraits and signature black humor leaven the appalling difficulties her [characters] face." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A tender and heartfelt novel about families coming together and falling apart. Marian Thurm creates characters who are so warm and messy and gloriously human, you'll want to stay with them forever. Only she could write a novel this funny about something so sad." —Daisy Alpert Florin, author of My Last Innocent Year
"I was bowled over by I Don't Know How To Tell You This not only because this brave and beautiful novel reveals so poignantly the tragedy of dementia, but also because Marian Thurm, while giving us a family that has drunk and witnessed more than its fair share of darkness, nonetheless allows its members to cling to love and hope laced with humor. This is a perfectly crafted novel, resonant with meaning, one that refuses despair and elevates us all." —Jonathan Wilson, author of The Red Balcony
This information about I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THIS was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Marian Thurm is the author of nine novels and five short story collections, including Today Is Not Your Day, a New York Times Editors' Choice. Her novel The Clairvoyant was a New York Times Notable Book. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Michigan Quarterly Review, Narrative Magazine, The Southampton Review, and many other magazines, and have been included in The Best American Short Stories, and numerous other anthologies. Her books have been translated into Japanese, Swedish, Dutch, German, and Italian. She has taught creative writing at Yale University and Barnard College, and in the MFA programs at Columbia University and Brooklyn College.
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