Written in a distinctive voice, with the soul and rhythm of the blues, Judith
Podell's stories cover a range of obsessions that include the best of 20th
Century angst: cigarettes, psychoanalysis, sex, love, death, and cats.
Working in the same tradition of Woody Allen, Grace Paley and Nora
Ephron, Podell's observations about life, love and loss would be
heartbreaking if they weren't so funny.
The title story, "Blues for Beginners," a riff on how to write the blues, struck such a familiar chord when it was originally published, it was instantly claimed by the world at large as something that belonged to all of us.
Throughout the other nine stories, Podell continues to hit all the right notes -- bringing us characters we all might have known and situations we might have been in ourselves. If we'd been lucky enough to live in Greenwich Village in the 70s. Or Washington, DC in the 80s.
