Mortal Distractions Author:Pauline Holdstock Holdstock’s essays are practice-what-you-preach models of how writers approach and perform the act of writing. She offers the reader a typical range of subjects: travel, art, relationships, writing and nature, but imbues them all with the writer’s perception of how the ordinary gets transformed into the extraordinary. For example: a mother ... more »and daughter Alaska cruise parallels the universal metaphors for change; the writer’s confrontation with the adage that there is nothing new under the sun confronts the plagiarism that haunts every writer’s psyche; the transformation of art into film and film into art energizes power of memory and the powerless photograph that captures it. Always, though, Holdstock’s pulse of the writer’s life imbues each essay with integrity and delivers each with style and eloquence.« less