Rosie Eats and Runs
By Claire Kirch -- Publishers Weekly, 6/4/2007 6:54:00 AM
Sunday morning's breakfast session didn't exactly go according to plan, but 800 booksellers took the changes in the morning's schedule in stride. First, last week, Paulo Coelho cancelled his appearance, possibly causing the larger-than-usual no-shows at Sunday's sold-out event. And, before introducing moderator Rosie O'Donnell, BEA's Lance Fensterman announced that, due to a scheduling conflict, O'Donnell would depart immediately following her presentation.
As a clearly subdued, though defiant, O'Donnell stood at the podium, in her first public appearance since the dust-up that led to her abruptly quitting ABC's The View last week, photographers armed with cameras stormed the stage, a scene that brought home for attendees the issues she raises in her memoir, Celebrity Detox, scheduled for release by Grand Central iPublishing n September.
O'Donnell spoke of originally planning Celebrity Detox, as an account of how she became addicted to fame while hosting her own talk show, but gave it up four years ago to focus on her family. After joining The View, however, she incorporated her return to television into the narrative.
"We had to change the epilogue. It's not a tell-all, but it tells all," she promised, noting that she'll aggressively promote Celebrity Detox this fall, as she's "now quite free to go to bookstores" and "will be doing all the talk shows -- though maybe not The View."
Following O'Donnell, Alice Sebold told the crowd that she was there because her husband had dared the reclusive author of The Lovely Bones to accept the invitation to speak to BEA booksellers about her second novel, Almost Moon, an October release from Little Brown. "But I don't believe in truth or dare," she said, "I believe in both." After thanking booksellers for handselling The Lovely Bones, which not only helped her pay off her student loans, but changed her life forever, Sebold described studying in UC-Irvine's MFA program, and how seeing a middle-aged, obviously neglected woman around town inspired her to "seek to write honest narratives about people who live difficult lives. These are the lives that interest me." Sebold concluded her moving account of the importance that anonymous woman assumed in her life with the words, "I've chosen, by writing this novel on the heels of success, both truth and dare."
Fensterman, who had assumed the duties of moderator, next introduced Ben Karlin, formerly a producer for Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, who apologized for not being Coelho, claiming even he was disappointed that the author was forced to coancel. Karlin, however, managed to win over the crowd with his irreverent wit, pointing out such similarities between the himself and Coelho by noting, "He's from Brazil. I've visited Argentina." Karlin's discussion of his February 2008 release from Grand Central, Lessons I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me, a collection of essays by male celebrities, was the perfect segue into the morning's last speaker, Ian McEwan, discussing his new release, On Chesil Beach, a cross between a novella and a novel about a couple's wedding night and how one defining moment destroys their marriage even before it really begins. "The unity of time and place a wedding night imposes was an irresistible idea for a short novel," McEwan explained.
