Ann Arbor Michigan author Sharon Pomerantz’s debut novel “Rich Boy” is experiencing some lavish praise from all the right places. A recent full-page review in Entertainment Weekly graded it as an A- and the respected critic Carol Fitzgerald, founder and editor, of Bookreporter.com said it reminded her of Herman Wouk’s masterpiece “Marjorie Morningstar”. A review of the book in Bookreporter.com provides an excellent summary of the new novel.

Entertainment Weekly said ”Rich Boy is told with such page-turning skill that its pleasures, if not deep, feel rich indeed”.

Sharon Pomerantz is a fiction writer and a lecturer at the University of Michigan whose stories have appeared in a variety of liteary journals, including Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Prarie Schooner, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Colorado Review. Her work has been widely anthologized and her story “Ghost Knife” was selected for Best American Short Stories 2003 (Houghton Mifflin). In 1996, her story “Shoes” was read as part of the Selected Shorts series at Symphony Space and broadcast on National Public Radio. A graduate of Smith College and the University of Michigan, Sharon is the winner of four Hopwood awards, a Ludwig Vogelstein grant, and fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Arts and New River Dramatists. As a nonfiction writer, she has written for The Chicago Tribune, The Village Voice, Hadassah Magazine, and many others.

One of the first chances readers in Michigan will get to hear Pomerantz will be at the Kerrytown BookFest September 12 in Ann Arbor Michigan. Pomerantz will be on a panel with four other Michigan authors discussing historical fiction. She joins moderator William Whitbeck (“To Account for Murder”); Michigan Notable Book Authors: Donald Lystra (“Season of Water and Ice”) and Steve Amick (“Nothing But a Smile”) and Michigan Author of the Year John Smolens (“The Anarchist”).  Pomerantz will be among good company at Kerrytown joining scores of award winning authors including three National Book Award finalists.

Writing in Bookreporter.com, Fitgerald particularly pointed out that “Rich Boy”  was a book she had been looking for that “envelops readers into a setting and period like “Mad Men”. “Rich Boy” follows protagonist Robert Vishniak, a middle class kid, who becomes part of what was once called New York “high society” with each decade richly layered with historical elements. Readers will find themselves making comparisons to “The Great Gatsby” and Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of Vanities”.

O Magazine in describing the book, said something like “an old fashioned drama about a poor boy who makes good, but feels bad about it”. Don’t we all? And the jacket should win an award unto itself.

Tags: Kerrytown BookFest, Michigan authors, Mittelit.com, Rich Boy, Sharon Pomerantz

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Speakers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.