Yvette Nachmias-Baeu – författare

Clara at Sixty is the portrait of a woman who, after losing her husband at an age when life begins to contract, returns to the world of fumbling, emotionally confused relationships. The series of mismatches are sometimes passionate and exciting, sometimes funny, but ultimately sad. Still grieving and searching for her identity, marginalized by a society that views women past their prime as invisible, she knows she must come to terms with the loss of her husband, the death of too many friends and the new reality of “being an older woman.” Her search to find meaning for the last chapter of her life is universal. A struggle that begins at birth and changes over time and circumstance. Clara, in the end, discovers her way forward.

Best Friends is a story of an unusual relationship between two gifted women who share their lives in a correspondence that spans three decades. It is autobiographical and yet it is also the memoir of a brilliant woman with remarkable vitality, whose life is continually interrupted and altered by bouts of schizophrenia. Overarching moments of shared experiences and gossip, Best Friends reveals a period of time, a now almost distant history, filled with personal and social transformations that affected our lives. I was deeply moved by the story of Beth’s yearning to become a great writer which perhaps has been realized in the pages of Best Friends.