Dani Shapiro

Picturing the Wreck

Thirty years after his family and career are destroyed by an affair with one of his patients, psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor Solomon Grossman finds a chance for redemption when he discovers where his grown son is working.

Exposing the mind of an emotionally devastated 64-year-old man is a courageous literary endeavor for a young female author, and PICTURING THE WRECK gives credence to the power of the imagination and the writer’s skill. With fluid prose and keen observation, Shapiro takes us achingly close to the center of a tortured heart and soul.

- Louisa Ermelino, PEOPLE

Dani Shapiro is not reluctant to confront taboos…crossing boundaries between patient and therapist…shifting swiftly between past and present without sacrificing pacing or control…She generates light and heat in illuminating her characters.

- WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

Affecting…(Solomon’s) pathos evokes shades of Graham Green’s ‘whiskey priest.

- ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION

Dani Shapiro is a master of the balancing act…moving effortlessly between life and death, sin and redemption…The intimate destructions of marriage and the desperate loneliness of lost love are deftly portrayed in prose that is at once spare and lyrical…testing the very limits of narrative and taking the story and our perceptions of its meaning to a whole new dimension…the dimension of forgiveness and love. Delicate, almost ethereal.

- Louisiana Times-Picayune

Compelling!

- Vanity Fair

Convincing and moving. A triumph.

- Publishers Weekly

Dani Shapiro interweaves personal and political history; tiny gold threads of possibility peek through, but no seams show.

- Library Journal