Lesley Dormen

Leslie Dormen used a fascinating format for “The Best Place To Be,” one I have never before seen. She calls this format, ‘a novel in stories,’ and, as you might guess, it is a cross between a novel and a series of short stories. Essentially, Dormen took different scenes from the life of her character, Grace Hanford - scenes from childhood to middle age - and put them in the order that best expressed the story she wanted to tell, instead of chronological order. It was a fascinating format, one that could be quite successful and that I think Dormen did well.

However, I unfortunately felt a bit ‘blah’ about the character, Grace. I found myself unable to relate to Grace at all. I didn’t agree with many of her priorities or decisions, but I also wasn’t able to commiserate with why she may have made them anyway. This book is more for the 40 year-old stunningly single sophisticate than the happily newly married.… (meer)

This collection of short stories sharing one narrator was at once insightful and impenetrable. Dormen follows her narrator, Grace Hanford, through her young life and into late middle age. While the occasional baffling run-on sentence or awkward metaphor describing something by comparing it to something even more obscure serve to unnecessarily complicate the narrative, Dormen’s surprising insight into one woman’s life experience is often strikingly and universally applicable. More than once, I found myself struck by her insight and able to relate to it completely, whether she was referring to talking to her college friends in code, admitting to a constant feeling of terror that needs to be masked, or describing arriving at that place between regret of the past and fear of the future that is, indeed, "the best place to be."… (meer)