PROUST, PICKLES & PAYCHECKS

Following up on The Subject of Our Lives (1998), which originated from a longtime San Francisco women's writing group, this collection of memoirs is by women bridging the gap between a generation who mostly forged careers, if at all, later in life, and their daughters who take having careers for granted. They treat both major life transitions and reflections on daily life past and present. Patton taught writing at San Francisco State for many years. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The View from a Story— Windows Into Women’s Lives

The fourteen women writers from San Francisco who brought us the popular The Subject of Our Lives are back with a new collection, Proust, Pickles, and Paychecks— Fourteen San Francisco Women Tell Their Stories, memoirs and essays that take up where their first book left off, continuing the stories of their lives.

The Subject of Our Lives addressed important moments in the past from these women writers’ lives. In this new book we’re caught up to date as we read about important changes and events happening now: a dinner party full of warmth, good friends, and picky eaters; browsing a Vermont Country Store and discovering the lure of the past and an affirmation of the future; saying goodbye to a country house and the life that went with it; hectic but delightful days spent with grandchildren; the transition from marriage and motherhood to midlife and even late-life careers.

Some of the stories are remembrances of different periods in the authors’ lives: childhood homes; vacations from long ago; San Francisco from a first introduction in the early 60s; Saudi Arabia of the 1960s; and beginning graduate school after marriage and a family, but not to replace them.

Proust, Pickles, and Paychecks is divided into chapters—Another Time; Another Place; Paychecks; The Way We Are; and Another Country. These sections reflect the progress of our lives, as shown by where we’ve lived, the work we do, who we are today, and places—both inward and out in the world—that we’ve traveled to.   The stories in Proust, Pickles, and Paychecks are about women and by women. Some are quiet revelations about the small bits of happiness that make up a good life, and others are about the big changes that shift the direction of life. This is also a collection that tells the story of a generation of women, as it reveals what was and is important to them and how they reach out for those things that bring satisfaction and happiness.