The Escape Artist
Selected as a New York Times “Editor’s Choice” new book in 2020.
Recommended as one of the “Best New Books” by People Magazine in 2020
BookPage named it a “Reader’s Choice” book of 2020.
The Escape Artist Helen Fremont. Additional Information. Available Editions. EDITION: Other Format: ISBN: 605: PRICE: $28.00 (USD) Available on NetGalley. Send To Kindle (MOBI) Download (EPUB) Readers who liked this book also liked. Helen Fremont's first memoir, After Long Silence, details how she and her sister learn about their family's hidden Holocaust past, a process she hopes will be liberating, but instead only further splinters her family. Her second memoir, The Escape Artist, fills in the shadowy emotional ground in this family beset by secrets and silence.
A luminous family memoir from the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller, After Long Silence, lauded as “mesmerizing” (The Washington Post Book World), “extraordinary” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), and “a triumphant work of art” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
In the tradition of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or George Hodgman’s Bettyville, Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on to both Helen and her older sister a penchant for keeping their lives neatly, even obsessively compartmentalized, and a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world.
She delves deeply into the family dynamic that produced such a startling devotion to secret-keeping, beginning with the painful and unexpected discovery that she has been disinherited in her father’s will. In scenes that are frank, moving, and often surprisingly funny, Fremont writes about growing up in such an intemperate household, with parents who pretended to be Catholics but were really Jews—survivors of Nazi-occupied Poland. She shares tales of family therapy sessions, disordered eating, her sister’s frequently unhinged meltdowns, and her own romantic misadventures as she tries to sort out her sexual identity.
In a family devoted to hiding the truth, Fremont learns the truth is the one thing that can set you free. Scorching, witty, and ultimately redemptive, The Escape Artist is a powerful contribution to the memoir shelf.
Watch (under 3 minutes) Author Helen Fremont on being disowned and declared dead by her family.
Hear (2 minute) segment on The Drum Literary Magazine “Safe and Sound” mini-cast, first episode.
Watch a 47 minute YouTube book talk with Helen Epstein hosted by the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Listen to “On Point” WYPR radio with Lisa Morgan and Marion Winik: Helen Fremont and the Minefield of Family Memoir.
Purchase Book:
After Long Silence
Driven to uncover their roots, Fremont and her sister pieced together an astonishing story: of Siberian Gulags and Italian royalty, of concentration camps and buried lives. After Long Silence is about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about families; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones. No one who reads this book can be unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets.
Published by Penguin Random House
Purchase Book at these places:
Indie Bound
Bookshop
Penguin Random House
Amazon
Good Reads
Barnes and Noble
Books A Million
“A story of safe but costly passage from one identity to another that takes us from Europe to America via World War II . . . [Fremont] has the intelligence and imagination to question her own motives. This allows her to question the memoir form, even as she deploys it so beautifully.”
“Mesmerizing . . . Fremont has accomplished something that seems close to impossible. She has made a fresh and worthy contribution to the vast literature of the Holocaust.”
“Fascinating . . . A tragic saga, but at the same time it often reads like a thriller filled with acts of extraordinary courage, descriptions of dangerous journeys and a series of secret identities.”
“Riveting . . . painfully authentic . . . a poignant memoir, a labor of love for the parents she never really knew.”
“Fremont’s memoir is an incredible tale of survival, a beautiful love story and a suspenseful account of how the author’s investigation of her roots shattered fiercely guarded family secrets…”
“…Fremont is an immensely gifted writer who has vividly reconstructed a sensitive and memorable family saga of terror, hiding, and passing, as well as of personal imperatives over two generations around both casting off and confronting the past.
HELEN FREMONT, a lawyer and writer, was raised Roman Catholic by her Eastern European emigre parents. It was not until she was thirty-five that she discovered that her parents were, in fact, Jewish Holocaust survivors. The story of her parents’ survival of the Soviet and Nazi occupations, as well as her own efforts to piece together her family’s hidden identity is recorded in her memoir, After Long Silence, published by Delacorte in 1999 (now available from Penguin Random House). A national bestseller and Featured Alternate of the Book of the Month Club, the book has been published in England and Germany. It was selected by The New York Times as a “New and Noteworthy” book in 2000.
Her critically acclaimed new memoir, The Escape Artist, was selected as a New York Times “Editor’s Choice” new book in 2020. It was also recommended as one of the “Best New Books” by People Magazine in 2020, and BookPage named it a “Reader’s Choice” book of 2020.
Helen is a graduate of Wellesley College, Boston University Law School, and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. She has been an attorney with the Massachusetts public defender agency since 1985, and was a consultant with the U.S. Justice Department. She was also a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Scholars Program, a fiction editor of the Marlboro Review, and has taught at Harvard University, Emerson College, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. She was awarded a fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and was selected the Common Book Author by Otterbein College in Columbus, Ohio. Her works of fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and Lilith, among other publications.
Helen lives in Boston with her wife, Donna, their giant mutt, Roshi (a rescued Houston Street Dog) and Louie, the cat who deigns to live with them. An avid rower and outdoorswoman, Helen can be found most mornings before dawn rowing on the Charles River, or working out at the Y. She co-hosts The Unauthorized Eleanor Wilner Reading Series for Friends of Writers, Inc.
The Escape Artist Blog
Helen is available for speaking events and workshops.
For rights inquiries, please contact Helen’s agent:
Gail Hochman ghochman@bromasite.com
More information and how to contact Helen:
Helen Fremont Sister
Email:Info@HelenFremont.com
Facebook:Helen Fremont Author Page
Instagram: instagram.com/helenfremont/
Twitter: twitter.com/HelenFremont @helenfremont
LinkedIn: Helen Fremont LinkedIn Page
Comments are closed.