Join Phyllis Schieber, author of the literary fiction novel, The Manicurist (Bell Bridge Books), as she virtually tours the blogosphere August 1 – September 30 2011 on her first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!
About Phyllis Schieber
The first great irony of Phyllis Schieber’s life was that she was born in a Catholic hospital. Her parents, survivors of the Holocaust, had settled in the South Bronx among other new immigrants. In the mid-fifties, her family moved to Washington Heights, an enclave for German Jews on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, known as “Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson.”She graduated from high school at sixteen, earned a B.A. in English from Herbert H. Lehman College, an M.A. in Literature from New York University, and later an M.S. as a Developmental Specialist from Yeshiva University.
She lives in Westchester County where she spends her days creating new stories and teaching writing. She is married and the mother of a grown son, an aspiring opera singer.
The Manicurist was a finalist in the 2011 Inaugural Indie Publishing Contest sponsored by the San Francisco Writer’s Conference.
Phyllis Schieber is the author of three other novels, The Sinner’s Guide to Confession, Willing Spirits, and Strictly Personal.
You can visit her website at www.phyllisschieberauthor.com.
About The Manicurist
The Manicurist is the story of Tessa Emanuel, a young woman who is engulfed by vivid images of the past. When Tessa is a child, both parents allegedly die in a car accident. However, the body of Tessa mother, Ursula, is never found. Tessa is obsessed by memories of her mother, whose battle with mental illness made Tessa’s childhood a secret world of intrigue and betrayal. Now married with a daughter, Tessa must come to terms with her own identity as a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a woman—but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories and a gift of clairvoyance that threatens to dismantle her life. At times she wants to escape this “gift,” but eventually she uses it discreetly in her work as a manicurist—where a peculiar client changes her future forever. Mysterious and compassionate, The Manicurist is a spellbinding novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knot of her life.
My Thoughts:
The Manicurist by Phyllis Schieber tells the story of Tessa and her mother Ursula and how the both come to terms with mental illness. It also tells the side story about her husband Walter and his family. A very poignant and endearing story of two women who are the same but oh so different. The story is told in the viewpoint of Tessa. As a result of a surprise visit to the salon she works as a manicurist, of an elderly woman, Fran, who tells Tessa that she knows something about her mother. Told with Tessa's memories that encompass 25+ years we come to know Tessa, Ursula, Fran and Regina, Tessa's daughter intimately.Ursula disappeared and was presumed dead after a deadly car accident killed Dennis, Tessa's father and Ursula's husband, and all Tessa has of her mother is memories. Tessa also has the ability to sense things that are going to happen, thus her love of being a manicurist as a palmist. This story is at times funny and sad and I enjoyed it very much, although the review copy I had had such tiny print (footnote print as my husband said) that I had a hard time reading it. But read it I did as I wanted to see what happened with this family and if they could reconcile their differences. I assume the finished copy will be more legible.
Thanks to Pump Up Your Book and Phyllis Schieber for this review copy and I was not monetarily compensated for my review.
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