June 2014
Photo © Mark Garvin.
Avery Corman is the author of a new memoir of his growing up years in the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s, My Old Neighborhood Remembered, to be published June 2014 by Barricade Books. The book has been called, “lyrical” by Ken Auletta, “poignant and evocative” by Walter Isaacson. He is also the author of the novels, Kramer vs. Kramer (the basis for the Academy Award-winning Best Picture), Oh, God! (the basis for the hit movie comedy starring George Burns), The Bust-Out King, The Old Neighborhood, 50, Prized Possessions, The Big Hype, A Perfect Divorce, The Boyfriend from Hell. He lives in Fort Lee, N.J.
"In 1977, Corman's Kramer vs. Kramer gave a voice to the bitterness of divorce; 27 years later, the author offers this reassessment of the matter...Corman writes with a warm and wise empathy that could strike a chord with many."
—Publishers Weekly
"The tension of Corman's 320-page novel is dissipated by the surprise ending, which may cause controversy. But, overall, this is a probing, well-dramatized treatment of a sensational crime that can no longer be papered over as a peccadillo."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Deft, witty and profoundly serious, this new novel by the author of Kramer Vs. Kramer is a confrontation by an ordinary man, Doug Gardner, a sportswriter, of his own principles and the demands of the marketplace...Sometimes Doug Gardner is a bit too good to be true, but he's a pleasure to have around, and it's a jaded reader indeed who won't be rooting for him all the way."
—Publishers Weekly
"Corman’s novel is a work of art. The characters overflow with vitality. The journey is joyous."
—Los Angeles Times
"Avery Corman has written a lyrical ode to another New York, a time when stickball and punchball and hanging out on stoops and drinking egg creams filled out afternoons, a city where people had an embracing sense of community. Reading this book is like gathering around a warm fire to hear tales spun by a master storyteller."
—Ken Auletta
"Avery Corman delighted us with his novel, The Old Neighborhood, and now he brings the Bronx alive again in a memoir. This is a poignant and evocative book filled with lessons for today. It will strike a chord in you wherever you may have grown up."
—Walter Isaacson
Kramer vs. Kramer by
"A great read, breezy but detailed and candid, with great dialogue." Dave Eggers The best-selling, groundbreaking novel adapted into the Academy Award-winning Best Picture starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, winner of ve Academy Awards. Published in more than fty foreign editions, Kramer vs. Kramer led to a sea change in divorce and family relations in the United States and internationally. Kramer vs. Kramer is Ted Kramer vs. Joanna Kramer, fatherhood vs. motherhood, freedom vs. responsibility, and finally, petitioner vs. respondent, as Joanna Kramer, in a bitter custody battle, tries to take the child she abandoned away from the husband she divorced. It is also a love affair of a kind-- of a father with his little boy."
My Old Neighborhood Remembered by
My Old Neighborhood Rememberedis a lyrical remembrance of neighborhood life that has vanished from the culture. Best-selling author Avery Corman vividly recreates the vibrant, colorful neighborhood where he grew up in the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s. He recalls candy stores and bookmakers, egg creams and double feature movies, street games like stickball and Johnny- on-the-pony, school days of a different era, social mores that have disappeared. His was the generation of children of the home front during World War II, and he recounts how the war was embedded in daily life, and how children became literate through newspaper coverage of the war, and through Dick and Jane and comic books. He remembers in his neighborhood a deep sense of community and shared experience. My Old Neighborhood Rememberedis a memoir that is urban history. Featured are 16 vintage photographs.Avery Corman also discusses the factors that altered the Bronx, in a decline that was particularly rapid and vast, before the area began to rebuild. As the author ofKramer vs. Kramer, a common assumption has been that Avery Corman was himself divorced; he was not. He was, however, a child of divorce at a time and place when divorce was rare, an experience woven through the narrative. My Old Neighborhood Rememberedis told with the storytelling skills that have made Avery Corman a critically acclaimed author whose books have been published throughout the world."
The Boyfriend from Hell by
This romantic psychological thriller blends the spirit of Sex and the City with the terror of Rosemary's Baby.