To Gether Tales
Review of novel by Richard Seltzer
I am the author.
This bittersweet comedy and romance has touches of tragedy and magic.
Writing during the pandemic and feeling nostalgia for what has been lost, the narrator, Abe, recounts stories told around the dinner table on a Caribbean cruise two years before.
Abe, the narrator, explains the title:
“I’m writing from the midst of this crisis, not with the wisdom of hindsight. Even if it gets no worse than it is right now, much has been lost.
“I’m hoping that we can gether. That’s a word that isn’t in the dictionary.
“To gether is to find new ways to be together, new ways to meet, to bond, to love.
“Even when physically isolated, we can come together in spirit, to share experiences and emotions to the point that we are intimately connected.”
“In any case, may we always treasure our normal life, knowing, as we now know, that it is fragile and should never be taken for granted.”
To Gether Tales is both a novel and a collection of stories.
There are several layers of narrative.
- the stories told
- the tellers of the stories interacting and growing/changing in the narrative present
- the backstories of the tellers
- and the story of the narrator.
It is (as one of the characters says), well-woven, “loominus.” (like the hand-woven shop in Woodstock, NY).
You can see videos of me reading many of these stories at YouTube.
