Allegra Goodman
Hello, Good Readers!
I have a new novel "Isola" coming out in 2025.
My novel "Sam" is now in paperback.
"Sam" is about a young girl's exuberance, wonder, and ambition as she comes of age.
Jenna Bush Hager picked "Sam" for her Today Show book club and said, "Sam is about as perfect of a coming-of-age story as I have ever read."
About me: I was born in Brooklyn, but I grew up in Honolulu where I did not have to wear shoes in school until fifth grade.
I now live in Cambridge, MA and I own boots. In addition to writing fiction, I read a lot and teach on occasion. In my free time, I swim and walk around the city.
I have four children, now getting pretty grown up. My oldest son (an economist) reads everything. My second son (a law student and grad student in political theory) reads mostly non-fiction, although I try to get him to read novels. My third son (an aspiring chemist) loves science fiction, fantasy, and history. My daughter (an aspiring human centered designer) enjoys biography and YA novels--but only if they have exceptionally beautiful covers.
I read fiction, biography, history, poetry, and books about art. I also enjoy discovering authors in translation.
When I was a seven-year-old living in Hawaii, I decided to become a novelist--but I began by writing poetry and short stories.
In high school and college I focused on short stories, and in June, 1986, I published my first in "Commentary."
My first book was a collection of short stories, "Total Immersion."
My second book, "The Family Markowitz" is a short story cycle that people tend to read as a novel.
Much of my work is about family in its many forms. I am also interested in religion, science, the threats and opportunities of technology, and the exploration of islands, real, and imaginary.
My novel, "Kaaterskill Falls" travels with a group of observant Jews to the Catskill Mountains.
"Intuition" enters a research a lab, where a young post-doc makes a discovery that excites everybody except for one skeptic--his ex-girlfriend.
A rare collection of cookbooks stars in my novel, "The Cookbook Collector."
A girl named Honor tries to save her mother in my dystopian YA novel, "The Other Side of the Island."
With Michael Prince, I have co-authored a supercool writing textbook. If you teach composition, take a look at "Speaking of Writing: a Brief Rhetoric."
If you'd like to learn more about me and about each of my books, check out my website:
http://allegragoodman.com/
Find me on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AllegraGoodman
Or on Instagram:
@allegragoodmanwriter
“Leaving this changeling for George, she washed his ripe fruit, and bit and broke the skin. An intense tang, the underside of velvet. Then flesh dissolved in a rush of nectar. Juice drenched her hand and wet the inside of her wrist. She had forgotten, if she'd ever know, that what was sweet could also be so complicated, that fruit could have a nap, like fabric, soft one way, sleek the other.”
“She herself vacillated when it came to belief. She did not particularly believe in God. Or, rather, she didn't believe in a particular God. Nevertheless, she kept an open mind. She was not a melancholy agnostic, but the optimistic kind. She liked to give God the benefit of the doubt.”
“People ask every day, "Why was I put on earth?" As if there is perhaps one reason. The truth is that there are too many reasons to count, and each reason and each soul connects to every other,”
“The new one actually reads, but only to pass judgment. This is the way kids learn today. Someone told them how you feel is more important than what you know, and so they think accusations are ideas. This is political correction run amok.”
“Women hate each other in science. You know why? Because the few that are around were trained by men. They survived by being twice as good and twice as competitive and twice as badass as the guys.”
“Though experience should be our guide . . . and we see mistakes are common at the age of twenty-three, it must be acknowledged that not every youthful feeling begins unworthily and ends in error. If this were the case, mankind would have perished long ago.”
“I have a dark sense of humor,' Fanny explained.'What's that supposed to mean?' asked Honor.'It means I'm funny once you get to know me,' Fanny said.”
“On breezy days when the wind was not too light and not too strong, Will and Pamela and the children flew their homemade kites in Peaceful Park until they were specks in the blue sky. When the wind was just right, the kites felt so strong and safe up there that Honor imagined nothing could budge them.'Ho bum," boasted Will, 'I could stand here all day and this kite would hold. It's like fishing.''Fishing in reverse,' said Pamela. 'Sky fishing.''What do you fish for in the air?' asked Honor.Pamela and Will started laughing. 'Oh, planets,' said Will. 'The occasional comet. An asteroid or two.'Honor held one kite string, and Will held the other. Pamela held Quintilian. On those afternoons, four did not seem like the wrong number for a family. Four seemed just right.”
“We've got an acquisitive gene. We want and want, and there's no way around it.”
“How sad, he thought, that desire found new objects but did not abate, that when it came to longing there was no end.”
“Prophecy is a poetry of change, social, political, moral, spiritual. It was with the prophetic model in mind that Shelley wrote of poets as the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”