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Barnes & Noble Burlingame CA
Please join Broadway actor and author Jody Gelb who will showcase her memoir She May Be Lying Down but She May Be Very Happy, a tender tribute to her daughter's life endorsed by best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love). Jody will chat about her book and sign copies on May 4th from 1-3 pm.
A mother-daughter memoir scrubbed of sentiment, She May Be Lying Down but She May Be Very Happy is a marvel of compression and potency. Everything was going right in the delivery room until, suddenly, it wasn't. The baby's brain was damaged; the new mother was unprepared for the life she and her family would now be living. In dense, lyrical prose, Jody Gelb pays tribute to her daughter's short life. Gelb lays her experience bare in the full range of its emotional complexity, from profound suffering to ecstatic joy. She May Be Lying Down but She May Be Very Happy isn't so much a book as the naked truth of being human in this imperfect world.
“Jody Gelb has written a book so rare and elegant and beautiful that I don’t even know how to categorize it: Essay? Poetry? Memoir? I think I might just call it a ‘monument.’ What a stunning work of art, of truth, and of love.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love
"A poignant and a refreshingly restrained memoir… As she thoughtfully and understatedly explores the challenges of parenting a disabled child, Gelb also clearly reveals the profoundly transformative power of love.” — Kirkus Reviews
"This astonishing memoir lives in the sacred space where life and death meet. From its first startling sentence to its last, Gelb's extraordinary story grips us and never lets go… When I reached the final page, I took a breath and began again." – Martin Moran, author of The Tricky Part and All the Rage
"Within the first paragraph of discovering Jody Gelb's writing, I knew I was stepping into a world of language and emotion unlike anything I'd ever encountered. Gelb's words don't just live on the page but seem to float above it, as if suspended from a great height by threads of silk. Maybe that's why this memoir, for all its gravity and dark places, retains so much light… You will never read another book like this." – Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion
"In her devastating, hilarious, pitch-perfect memoir about motherhood and mortality, Gelb proves that no family history is too tragic for laughter, no loss--even the death of a child--too painful for celebration. Filled with uncommon wisdom and hard-won insights, this book is a beacon for life's toughest moments, a welcome reminder that you're not alone." – Mark Matousek, author of Lessons from an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life
"There is a space between private and public where we humans waver. She May Be Lying Down but She May Be Very Happy by Jody Gelb explores that liminal space by and through both her body as a mother, lover, performer, and the roles she has inhabited in her life... A tender triumph." – Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust
Jody Gelb has a forty-year career acting on stage and screen. She has portrayed roles in the Tony Award-winning Broadway plays The Who’s Tommy, Titanic, Big River, and Wicked, among others. Gelb also played Joan of Arc’s mother in the David Byrne rock opera Joan of Arc: Into the Fire at The Public Theater in New York and was a featured player in the world premiere of Shel Silverstein’s Wild Life with Julie Hagerty, Henderson Forsythe, William H. Macy, and Raynor Scheine. On television, she has appeared in guest roles in Gunplay, Law & Order, and Dr. Death. Gelb is based in Burlingame and now follows the career of her daughter, Dora Jar, as she tours the USA and the world as a singer-songwriter.
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2385142-0
