Ilana Stanger-Ross

Ilana — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:46:13 +0000

Two pictures from last month’s BEA in NYC:

First, the Penguin-mobile.

Second, Sima cruising atop the Penguin-mobile.

Lovely, ain’t it?

Thank you to Juliet, my amazing (and first) ex-editor, for sending me pictures!

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Ilana — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:35:10 +0000

3 exciting things happened yesterday:

First, I was given 2 free umbilical cord clamps (you know–that plastic doo-hickey) by a hospital clerk. Granted, this was after handing over $105 to have all my instruments sterilized, but still — one doesn’t need to be a novelist to read the clamps as a promise of the wonderful babies I’ll soon be helping to bring into this world.

Second, there was a two-for-one sale on organic peanut-butter at our grocery store. I mean: two-for-one, and organic! And peanut butter was on my shopping list! What are the chances?!

Third, Sima was ranked #1 on Amazon’s Jewish American fiction list. The list is updated hourly so I don’t expect I’ll be hanging around #1 for long, but look at my company – Amy Bloom, Elie Wiesel – I kind of wanted to photograph it for posterity.

And so it goes…I cheer for Sima from the sidelines, excited each time someone new reviews it on amazon or emails me about it; I run around collecting equipment and reviewing protocols and readying myself to begin work as a midwife on July 1st; and I hang around my home, reveling in time with the girls, in having the time to run errands or volunteer at Eva’s school or just plain play.

These are good days.

Oh, and here’s one more good thing (though I keep fretting about my hair):

Sima: The Book Trailer

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The Penguin and I: The Final Post

Ilana — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:20:20 +0000

Where was I?

Ah, yes, having talked a bit about each of the main characters over the course of the week, it’s time for the Sima’s Undergarments for Women, wine pairing menu.

To backtrack briefly: while on tour for the hardcover release of Sima last winter, I found myself reading at a boutique wine shop in a wealthy suburb of Toronto. The wine store ran a program: for something like $50, customers got a light dinner, a talk by an author, and 3 drinks matched to the reading. They even threw in a copy of the novel.

I thought: where has this been all my life?

We began with a champagne cocktail. “Because the novel is set in a lingerie shop, and lingerie is from France,” the sommelier explained.

Okay, I could buy this.

Read the whole post here.

Penguin.com and me, BFF

Ilana — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:02:09 +0000

I’ve already talked about how I set out to write Lev and Sima’s marriage: forty-six years together, and for all their intimacy a loneliness between them.

And then into that marriage that classic novelistic device: A stranger comes to town.

A stranger with perfect breasts.

Who happens to be Israeli.

Readers often express surprise that I chose to write from the perspective of Sima, a much older woman. That wasn’t a difficult choice: I was sick of reading fiction written by twenty-somethings about twenty-somethings (I happened to be in an MFA program at the time), and Sima’s voice felt very natural to me.

Writing an Israeli woman, however, felt like a leap. And of all the many things I beat myself up on when I first started writing Sima, Timna herself may have topped the list.

Given the political situation in the Middle East, I often wondered whether what I was doing was, well, kosher. I mean: the character is Israeli—just out of the army, and waiting for her own boyfriend to finish his military service—and yet the setting is entirely divorced from any kind of political reality.

And yet, the more I wrote Timna, the less I worried.

Read the entire post here.

The Penguin and I, day 3

The Penguin and I, day 3

Ilana — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:26:03 +0000

Yesterday, I wrote about how interesting it’s been for me to listen to reader’s reactions to Sima, who they tend to love or hate.

As for Lev, Sima’s husband, the reaction is more consistent: for the most part, readers adore him.

Personally, I don’t always buy it. I mean, don’t get me wrong: of course I like Lev—I wrote him, after all. But their ardour has a protective, maternal consistency to it, and sometimes I wonder: you love him on paper, but wouldn’t he drive you just a little nuts in real life?

I often got asked how I came to write Sima and Lev’s marriage. At the opening of the novel we’re told they’ve been married 46 years. Readers wonder, fair enough, how I had the insight—some might say chutzpah—to write that kind of relationship given that I’m, well, young enough to be their daughter, with change to spare.

There were many, many aspects of the novel that developed as I wrote, the plot driven by where the characters forced it to go.

This wasn’t one of them.

Read the entire post here.

Blogging for Penguin, day 2

Ilana — Tue, 18 May 2010 16:47:07 +0000

Sima’s Undergarments for Women opens with breasts.

“Sima surprised herself by blushing at the round perfection of the young woman’s breasts,” it reads. “For thirty-five years, after all, breasts had been her business.”

Over the next 13 lines, I detail them.

By this point in Sima’s publishing career I’ve done lots and lots of readings: At independent book stores, cozy living-room book clubs, Jewish festivals, lingerie stores, and even, once, a wine shop. (They served each guest 3 drinks, one for each of my main characters. If you follow the blog I’ll reveal the Sima’s Undergarments for Women wine pairings by the end of the week.)

Read the full post here.

Penguin.com and me

Ilana — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:26:17 +0000

As promised/heralded/previously announced, I’m blogging for Penguin this week.

Below is the beginning of today’s blog, with a link to the full-meal deal. More to follow, really this time, because they asked and I told them I’d do it and so set the alarm for 5:30am and, voila, it’s amazing what committed deadlines can do for productivity.

But I digress. Here we go. Hot off the proverbial press:

Hello out there—

I am so pleased to be blogging for Penguin this week. It feels a bit surreal: to set the scene, it is just before 6 am in Victoria, British Columbia, where I live, and my cat is circling my chair, meowing furiously, desperate to be on my lap.

Victoria is a small city on the southern tip of Vancouver Island—a peninsula on an island is how locals describe it. Basically, to get here you travel west across Canada: further, further, further still.

When you hit the Pacific Ocean, you keep going. And then here we are, an island about the size of New Jersey, most of it remote in a brown bear, cougar kind of way, and then some of it filled with really good coffee shops and 1950s ranch homes.

I think that sums it up.

All this is a long way from Boro Park, Brooklyn, where my novel, Sima’s Undergarments for Women, which will be released in paperback next week, is set.

Read the rest here.

Paperback & paperwork

Ilana — Thu, 13 May 2010 04:21:47 +0000

Now where was I?

Oh yes, drowning in study cards and twitching every time my pager rang.

Well, I’ve graduated UBC Midwifery, mostly. The actual ceremony & much anticipated after-party remains.

And a national exam.

And then there’s hospital registration & medical billing number assignment & insurance payments and a whole lot of paperwork. But that’s not really blog-worthy.

What is: Sima the Paperback hits the shelves on May 25th.

(Which also happens to be my brother’s wedding anniversary. Happy 12th Mickey & Sandi!)

I’ll be blogging about Sima on Penguin.com next week. (And presumably posting links here as well, since clearly I’m not capable of one well-groomed blog, let alone two.)

Till then: Tell your book club, your mama’s book club, your mama’s best friend’s book club: Sima is in paperback, and if a novel set in a bra-shop doesn’t get a book group talking, nothing will.

Penguin.com and me

Hiatus

Ilana — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:50:51 +0000

Blog currently on hiatus while I finish my midwifery training (April 4th, and counting down), but stay tuned for the June publication of Sima’s Undergarments for Women: The Paperback, forthcoming from Penguin Press….

Books

Ilana — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:33:45 +0000

So I started reading a book.

A real book.

Actually, it started shortly after I posted about how I don’t read anymore because blah blah being a midwifery student is so busy. And I thought, really? Really really? Because I love reading. It defines me, or used to. And I thought, what about my daughters? If they don’t see me reading, what will make them readers?

So I picked up a book. It felt nice in my hands. And it was about NYC, and the Twin Towers, but not heavy-handed, just a story, a remember when kind of tale.

And then I was reading the book. Let the Great World Spin, by Colin Mcann. It’s an amazing book. It’s smart and beautiful and heartbreaking, and it takes place in the 1970s, and okay, so I wasn’t born until 1975, but I swear I can remember the prostitutes under the Major Deegan just as he describes, they come to me suddenly, a small girl looking out the car window on a dark night and bright women under the bridge, waiting.

And: there’s a character named Tillie.

And then I idly turned to the acknowledgements at the back of the book, because of course I love reading the acknowledgments at the back of the book, and I saw there was a photo credit, so I turned to look for the photo, and it wasn’t there, and neither were 50-odd pages of my book.

Stopped me cold.

How could I keep reading knowing I’d hit a gap? I was lost. It was terrible.

I hadn’t figured my way to a solution –the chain bookstore downtown, get them to replace it, but when and with what receipt–when my wonderful in-laws showed-up. And by showed-up I mean came to town to take care of Eva & Tille while Jordan was away at a conference and I was on-call and please, could you come all the way from Ontario to help out, and, yes, they could.

And what should my mother-in-law be reading but Let the Great World Spin, and an intact version.

I’m all caught up now. Thank goodness, as it was Tillie herself whose voice was missing from my version.

Don’t let me forget to read fiction again, okay?

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