Loud and Clear
By Anna Quindlen

This extraordinary novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist writes the way Tiger Woods plays golf: powerfully and passionately, consistently demonstrating excellence. She’s written many books. I read Black and Blue perhaps six years ago – about a woman on the run from her abusive husband – and it was so well written, so intensely real, so incredibly moving, that the memory of it acts as a magnet; it still pulls at my heart-strings.

In this collection of her columns written for Newsweek magazine over the years, Ms. Quindlen has extended her string of books worth buying. Her insightful, acerbic observations are right on the mark whether the topic is politics, everyday pressures or the pit-falls of daily living. Sometimes I laughed out loud. This is the kind of book one can open to at any page and find a gem of wisdom. Each column, perhaps 1,000 words in length, is just the right size for a daily deep thought. She’s both “provocative and inspiring.” No wonder I like her.

The New York Times said that Anna Quindlen “has what [James] Joyce called the common touch, the ability to speak to many people about what’s on their minds before they have the vaguest idea what’s on their minds.” And what she says, and the way she says it, is a thing of grace and beauty. I found her April 1993 column, The Power of One, particularly poignant.

This book is the kind of thing I’d relish finding on a table in the guest bedroom of my host’s home: bite-size bed-time reading, pre-packaged, nourishing, and easy to digest.

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