Still Talking - by Lore Segal (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"For almost six decades Segal has quietly produced some of the best fiction and essays in American literature..."--The New York Times

In this eagerly awaited follow-up to Ladies' Lunch, the beloved New Yorker writer Lore Segal's returns with her final collection stories of the old friends who have loved and lunched together for over 40 years . . .

"Segal writes with welcome clarity about life's final years, and if her characters are not always as wise as they think they are, Segal eyes them all with the unsentimental wisdom of a life spent writing wondrous stories and essays, a career spent telling the truth."--Slate

Lore Segal was a master of the short story, and this collection shows her in peak form. Profound, dark, and often hilarious, Segal portrays her characters foibles, eccentricities and passions with great compassion and exactness, as they grapple with life, aging, and each other.

Readers of Ladies Lunch will recognize the educated, urbane nonagenarian women who have been friends for a lifetime, as they tackle aging's affronts with wit, grace and resourcefulness.

With an Introduction by Vivian Gornick

Review Quotes

"The key to Segal's work is her ability to call up memories in the way of a raconteur; instead of being a source of personal pain, the past comes to her as a fount of shimmering narrative potential. . . .Segal never loses her equipoise, or her sense of humor, in these most extreme confrontations with mortality. To the end there are sensations to describe, absurdities to ponder and memories to relate." -- Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

A brilliant Jewish storyteller may be gone, but her characters are 'still talking'. . .Lore Segal's posthumous short story collection once again shows her mastery of the form." -- Ann Levin, The Forward

". . .a gift. . . reading Still Talking feels like being greeted by old friends, or having a new season added to a favorite TV show one thought had ended. . . .Though there is much to mourn in the loss of such a masterful author, her final posthumously published collection contains much that reminds us of her vibrancy, keeping a conversation with her and her writing alive for her readers." -- Na'amit Sturm Nagel, The Los Angeles Review of Books

PRAISE FOR LADIES' LUNCH (2023)
2023 National Jewish Book Awards Finalist
The New Yorker's Best Book of the Year in 2024
A Slate Best Book of the Year in 2023
The New Yorker's Best Books We've Read This Week
Shelf Awareness Best Books We've Read This Week
Literary Hub Books To Round Out This September
A Barnes & Noble Best Books of 2023
A Barnes & Noble Our Monthly Pick

"Mysterious, mesmerizing ..." --The New York Times

"Segal writes with welcome clarity about life's final years, and if her characters are not always as wise as they think they are, Segal eyes them all with the unsentimental wisdom of a life spent writing wondrous stories and essays, a career spent telling the truth." -- Slate

"Gemlike stories from a master of the form." -- Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review

"Segal brings her rapier wit to this intelligent collection...Segal's unfailing ear and light comedic touch belie the momentous, existential nature of her subject matter. This is funny and moving in equal measure." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Lore Segal (1928 - 2024) was the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Shakespeare's Kitchen, as well as the novels Half the Kingdom, Lucinella, Other People's Houses, Her First American and the collection The Journal I Did Not Keep. Her story collection Ladies Lunch was a New Yorker book of the Year.

Segal received the American Academy Arts and Letters Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The O'Henry Prize and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. Her work appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, and numerous other publications. In 2023, Segal was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Vivian Gornick is a writer and critic whose work has received two National Book Critics Circle Award nominations and been collected in The Best American Essays 2014. Her works include the memoirs Fierce Attachments--ranked the best memoir of the last fifty years by the New York Times--The Odd Woman and the City, and Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader, as well as the classic text on writing, The Situation and the Story.