Helen Epstein

Book Review: “Deliver Us” — A Memoir of a Boy’s Life in a Small Italian Town

August 9, 2011
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Originally published in 1963, and today considered by some critics a landmark in twentieth century Italian literature, in English Luigi Meneghello’s memoir feels more like a duty than a delight to read.

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Fuse Theater Review: A “Turn” by a Prodigiously Gifted Actress

August 5, 2011
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A fascinating adaptation, well worth the trip to out-of-the-way Chester, MA, TURN OF THE SCREW is never less than interesting and often all-absorbing — especially when actress Allison McLemore lets loose.

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Film Review: A Game Well Worth Playing

July 11, 2011
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QUEEN TO PLAY is an offbeat feminist fable, set in a gorgeous but dirt-poor and provincial part of Corsica.

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Theater Review: Jane Austen Tweets In Chester, MA

July 11, 2011
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The Chester Theatre Company’s production, directed by Ron Bashford, runs over two hours with nary a dull moment and the actors seem to be having as wonderful a time as the audience.

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Fuse Theater Review: Shakespeare in Paris

July 3, 2011
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The production is set in France of the 1920s and artfully combines evocations of both Paris and the Forest of Arden: The city of lights is represented by miniature versions of famous landmarks: the Arc de Triomphe; Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower — that twinkle at night and serve as props as well as set.

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Visual Arts Review: Get to Know Pissarro’s People at The Clark

June 26, 2011
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Camille Pissarro lived to be 73. As he aged, he looked more and more like the prototype of a Sephardic Jew. Anti-Semitic rioting accompanied the Dreyfus Affair; the painter found it prudent to stay inside his hotel room in Paris.

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Theater Review: Very Fond Memories of Water

June 19, 2011
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This is a highly satisfying evening of light theater that provokes its audience to bursts of recognition, laughter and sorrow in quick succession.

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Book Review: One Hundred Names for Love

June 18, 2011
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ONE HUNDRED NAMES FOR LOVE is an intermittently engaging and very useful book for millions of partners, parents, children, friends and caretakers of stroke victims as well as anyone else interested in the workings of the mind.

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Book Review: An Intriguing but Annoying House of Exile

May 27, 2011
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Ambitious, by turns captivating and exasperating, this sprawling book is like an enormous photomontage—that popular German art form of the 1920s—made up of textual mosaics from newspaper articles, diary entries, letters, novels, or, on occasion, FBI files.

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Visual Arts News: Gloucester Writer’s Center Celebrates Birthday

May 15, 2011
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Updated Local artist, curator and arts educator Susan Erony, whose text piece on silk “To Gloucester with Love” is a setting of a Charles Olson poem, gave a model of an arts center talk on the evolution of text as visual art.

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