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Thirty-four and decidedly independent,
Renata has been known to keep her involvement with people—men
in particular—to a minimum. Even her job at the library
keeps her at a remove from the uncertainty of trusting other
people with the stories of her past. Instead she loses herself
in language, ever measuring the integrity of words against
lived experience. Then Jack, patient, solid, and sexy, enters
her life. One bright September morning, as Renata walks across
the Brooklyn Bridge to work, the sky bursts open and change
comes without warning. It quickly becomes clear in the days
ahead that Renata cannot keep memories of her buried past—of
a twin sister, a betrayal, of family truths too ugly to acknowledge—at
bay. Written with tremendous compassion and imagination, informed
by an abiding love for the people of New York, and crafted
by a master storyteller at the height of her powers, The
Writing on the Wall is a profoundly engaging novel about
how one woman saw—and we all continue to ponder—the
defining event of our times.
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
is the author of nineteen books of fiction and nonfiction,
including the novels The Writing on the Wall, Disturbances
in the Field, Leaving Brooklyn(nominated for a
PEN/Faulkner Award), Rough Strife(nominated for the
PEN/Hemingway First Novel Award), and In the Family Way:
An Urban Comedy; the memoir Ruined by Reading;
and the poetry collection In Solitary. She has received
awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment
for the Arts, and the New York State Foundation for the Arts.
She lives in New York City.
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