Barbara Froman has always loved movies. The Wilmette resident, who will speak at Max and Benny’s Chicago Jewish Authors LIterary series on August 6th at 7:00PM, says, “There’s something magical about sitting in the dark and watching stories unfold on a large screen.”
That affection for the cinematic experience led Froman to write Shadows and Ghosts, a novel which won the Prose prize in Fairleigh Dickinson University and Serving House Book’s 2011 First Book Contest.
The book, which is framed with famous film images and screenwriters’ directions. tells the story of Ida Mae Glick, a critically acclaimed Jewish filmmaker who suffers a near fatal heart attack when she tries to live on the same meager rations as a group of homeless people she is filming. When she winds up in the hospital, she finds herself facing a neurotic psychiatrist who believes she’s unstable, her identical twin sister who is intent on having her committed, and her ghostly Jewish mother who’s come back from the grave to settle old gripes.
Richard Reeder, director of Max and Benny’s literary series, calls Shadows and Ghosts “A delightful novel,” and says that the “trials and tribulations” facing Froman’s filmmaker protagonist are reminiscent of those found in a Woody Allen movie or Philip Roth novel, comparisons which please the author enormously
For more information about the event, visit http://maxandbennys.com For more information about Froman’s book, visit http://www.barbarafroman.com
