Thursday's Group: a Review: Spring 2008

About Thursday's Group: A Review Thursday's Group: A Review is an anthology by writers who meet weekly under the auspices of the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. It is unique for several reasons, starting with its origins. This book began because the authors, who have been meeting on Thursdays for a number of years to read and review each other's work, decided to take the next step by publishing selections of that work. Other writing groups will want to take note of the results. No lens can focus an author's editorial eye like preparing for publication. Writers who may not be ready to publish a book might still have stories, shorts or excerpts that they wish to see in print. The variety of voices, terse and loquacious, humorous and wrenching, and the different genres, stories, memoirs and commentary, give the book a range of reading pleasures. Also, there is a mix of subject matter to constantly surprise and entertain; for example: A young girl must cope with the hazards of a dysfunctional family. She realizes that to be fully at home in the world, she must solve the mystery that lurks beneath her parents' passionate conflicts. In an only-in-New York adventure, we take a wild ride across the George Washington Bridge. From there we move to a quietly valiant moment in the life of a cancer survivor. We are given a wry and witty commentary on change, then dash for a train in one of those improbable occasions when all you can do is whoop for joy. A nurse falls in love with one of her patients, an amnesiac. Who is she in love with? ... her patient? her dream? his dreams? An expert equestrian tells us what it's like to spend a lifetime living and working among horses and those devoted to their care. She lets us see how it feels to own a farm an hour north of Manhattan and to move between the parallel worlds of that frenetic city and rural Bedford. Suddenly, without warning, a young mother finds herself violated and with that the world she has built for herself thr