All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost

by Lan Samantha CHANG

205 pages

MY OWN THOUGHTS

This book is so hauntingly beautiful!
The intensity of the prose reads like poetry – see the little excerpt here below, a line I kept reading and rereading.
The characters are very real, their feelings and emotion so aptly described and evoked. I felt drawn by these people all along, and read this book in one sitting. This is the sort of book after which the characters remain in you, you seem to know them like other acquaintances. How fascinating would it be to have such a writer leading your writer workshop!

Excerpt:

“He would not take comfort in the banality of the present,
but would instead continue striving,
with all of the energy and confidence he could muster,
for the as yet unseen magnificence of the future.”  p. 26

ABOUT THE BOOK

A haunting story of art, ambition, love, and friendship by a writer of elegant, exacting prose. At the renowned writing school in Bonneville, every student is simultaneously terrified of and attracted to the charismatic and mysterious poet and professor Miranda Sturgis, whose high standards for art are both intimidating and inspiring. As two students, Roman and Bernard, strive to win her admiration, the lines between mentorship, friendship, and love are blurred.

Roman’s star rises early, and his first book wins a prestigious prize. Meanwhile, Bernard labors for years over a single poem. Secrets of the past begin to surface, friendships are broken, and Miranda continues to cast a shadow over their lives. What is the hidden burden of early promise? What are the personal costs of a life devoted to the pursuit of art? All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost is a brilliant evocation of the demands of ambition and vocation, personal loyalty and poetic truth. [Product description]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lan Samantha Chang‘s fiction has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Story and The Best American Short Stories 1994 and 1996. Chang is the author of the award-winning books Hunger and Inheritance, and the novel All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost. She is the recipient of the Wallace Stegner and Truman Capote fellowships at Stanford University. She also received, from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Teaching-Writing fellowship and a Michener-Copernicus fellowship. Her many awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, and she was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa, where she directs the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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