Book Reviews

Going to Solace – an engaging story of the human spirit

Today’s featured book is Going to Solace by Amanda McTigue. Reviewed by Gil Mansergh. “I read over a hundred books annually for my NPR affiliated radio show, and I selected Amanda McTigue’s Going to Solace as the best novel I have read this year [2012]. In the rural Carolinas of 1989, things move at a different pace and folks either know each other—or know of each other. In just five days (including Thanksgiving) first-time novelist Amanda McTigue lets us get to know and care about the people who work, visit and reside in a Blue Ridge Mountain hospice home known simply as Solace. The residents are mostly old and worn out, the visitors are on edge from the uncertain finality of what will come soon, and the dedicated caregivers may have seen it all before, but are still deeply involved. I know you will get involved as well.” Gil Mansergh is…

Guest Bloggers

Amanda McTigue Untethered

Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue . . . I’ll confess with some dismay that contrary to the many uplifting articles and memoirs I have read about the serenity of older age, it continues to elude me. Serenity, that is, not the march of years across my face, kneecaps and pelvic floor muscles. I’m looking forward to any later-in-life serenity that may come my way. Indeed, I practice all kinds of meditations and mantras and daily exercises, etc., to invite it in. But my emotional set point tends to be what it’s always been: low-level (self)doubt. That’s the place whence I write. If that’s true for you, let me offer some slant wisdom here from some fellow artists. Take Tatiana Maslany. You may have seen her in a futuristic TV show called “Orphan Black” in which she plays (gorgeously!) multiple clones of herself. She’s a hell of a young actor, and here…

Book Reviews

Going to Solace by Amanda McTigue

In Going to Solace, Amanda McTigue deftly portrays the lives of three families, their caretakers, their hospice workers and their experiences with Solace, a hospice community. Amanda handles the subject of end-of-life with sensitivity and tender care. So well- written. Amanda writes about the Blue Ridge Mountains with such loving detail, I felt like I was there. Amanda’s characters are honest, lively and intriguing. Going to Solace is a lesson in the human spirit, filled with emotional twangs, and a satisfying place to be.  

Guest Bloggers

Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue — The Power of Place

Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue — The Power of Place Writing is setting. Indeed, to write is to place (that’s “place” as a verb). We writers place readers in worlds. We set them into circumstances, stories, imagery, facts, memories, actions, fantasies, and so on. Setting in this sense isn’t mere background. It’s the sum total of every last word we write. And yet, so often we think of place as scenery. What a mistake! Place shapes voice. I’m not talking dialect here. I’m saying the ways we writers situate ourselves in imagined (or remembered) worlds give rise to the ways we convey those worlds to others. Our first task, then, is to place ourselves so fully that our readers go with us. “All well and good,” you say, “but how can we interrupt our action-packed, conflict=drama, page-turning flow to squeeze in some detail of setting? We’re writing to keep readers reading!…