Sundays at Sarah's: An Anthology of Women's Writing

By Martha Manno

We meet every other Sunday evening, reading the work of one or two of us, to suggest, to argue and to encourage. Ten women creating fiction, memoir, poetry...This book is a celebration of the writing... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 0974691100
• ISBN13: 9780974691107
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Little Pear Press
• Length: 104 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Reading Sundays at Sarahs with pleasure

I have really enjoyed the short stories in Sundays at Sarah's. A month later I can still recall how they capture the lives of people I have known and loved. The situations and stresses are believable, as are the resources these characters find within themselves. I could read these stories again and enjoy them thoroughly.

Sisters of Sundays at Sarah's

Our writing group in Portland, Oregon, meets every other Thursday afternoon. Like the writers in the women's anthology, Sundays at Sarah's, we listen to, read, discuss, make suggestions, inspire and reassure our sister scribes. When one of our members was led to this collection of writings, we knew we had to read and review at least some of its contents, for ourselves and for our sisters at Sarah's. We were impressed with the individual selections in this women's anthology, Sundays at Sarah's, edited by Martha Manno. The grace of Barbara Schweitzer's poem, "Over Still Waters," contrasts with the thoughtful whimsy of her "Obituary of a Fly," giving dimension to her work. "The Home Front," a story by Ruth Bailey, patiently crafts a view of a young war-time mother through the eyes of four of her neighbors. Martha Manno, in "To Mark Weitz, For Everything, With Love," lovingly creates a teacher-student relationship through the voice of the student, grateful for a respect she has been given. "An Easy Mark," by Catherine McCrane Keating, is a delightfully sly short story about a developer who preys on the insecurities of "his special prey," middle-aged women looking for the security of a condo home. Keating skillfully guides the reader to a surprising conclusion that turns out to be not as foregone for the shyster as might be expected. The cumulative experience of the entire volume - the relationship of the selections to one another - adds a second level of reader enjoyment.Across the selections as a whole tones shift, content changes, points-of-view interconnect, genre backs against genre. As a result, the underlying experience of these ten writers also speaks; their interaction as a group surfaces. The authors contrast, but also echo one another. Their shared experience in an ongoing writing group produces an anthology that communicates the chemistry of the group as well as the talents of the individual writers. Reading Sunday at Sarah's gave us an appetite for more writing group anthologies. It also inspired us to keep writing and, perhaps, to "sister-up" with groups such as this one.

Sunday at Sarah's short stories of real women

If you are from Rhode Island or more specifically Providence you will enjoy even more this anthology compiled by a women's writing group. Wonderful slice of life and not so slice of life stories that leave you thinking about them long after they are read.

A satisfying anthology

I was immediately drawn to this book by the striking cover photograph of a pensive young woman, and then rewarded by a fine collection of stories and poems. Readers can experience the tenderness and silliness of a school girl's crush on her junior-high school teacher, watch a new marriage from the perspective of two sets of neighbors, two young girls and two old women,and perhaps shudder at the forcefulness of Barbara Schweitzer's poem "Falling." These are just three examples of the carefully crafted pieces in Sundays at Sarah's. All are worth the reader's attention.

Ten Women - Fifteen Years

This is the real stuff; ten women, 13 stories, 4 poems. "Sundays at Sarah's" is the result of a writing project that has been developing for more than 15 years, and although not well known, most of these writers have been previously published.As are all good short stories, the poetry and stories in this collection are all slices of bigger pies. In each we get a brief look at some characters and a situation. Sometimes that is all we get. Sometimes we are allowed to watch the situation, or the characters, develop further. We never get the complete resolution, but isn't that how life really works?These women have written about love, thoughts of suicide, lonely people, fantasies, infidelities and fantasies of infidelities. We meet the very lucky guy, who, while waiting for the 'basic blind date', encounters the exotic "Woman in the Green Fez." We watch mothers abandon their children and a couple fall in love through a hole in the wall.Our hope is that "Sundays at Sarah's II" doesn't take another 15 years.