The Woman Who Was Not All There
Harper & Row, 1988
CAN A SNAKE still bite once its head has been cut off? That kind of question preoccupies the children of Marjorie LeBlanc, the woman who was not all there, in Paula Sharp's award-winning novel of getting by in Durham, North Carolina. For years after Marjorie's husband abandons her, life in the form of her four children, her sister, and her friends swirls past her until she grinds to a complete halt. With wrenching wit, Sharp sets Marjorie up to find a way out of the inactive lane.
Sharp herself has never been in the slow lane. After Dartmouth she taught school, worked as a criminal investigator for the Jersey City Public Defender's Office, translated Latin American fiction, and earned a Columbia University law degree. She writes during sabbaticals from her work as a public defender in Manhattan. Just out: Sharp's The Importer:Stories about Netta andStanley (Harper Collins, 1991), Louisiana cousins who kidnap a Wall Street lawyer.
