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WORK TITLE: The Possible World
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.lieseschwarz.com/
CITY: Chapel Hill
STATE: NC
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Harvard University; University of Virginia, medical degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Emergency medicine doctor.
AWARDS:University of Virginia, Henfield/Transatlantic Review Prize.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Liese O’Halloran Schwarz is an emergency medicine doctor who earned her degree from the University of Virginia where she won the Henfield/Transatlantic Review Prize for fiction. While in medical school, she wrote her first novel, New Canaan, about a filmmaker seeking answers to his mother’s death. She spent her early childhood overseas, grew up in Washington, DC, and now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Schwarz writes fiction based on her medical experience and human interaction.
New Canaan
In Schwarz’s 1990 book, Near Canaan, young New York filmmaker Buddy Gates arrives in small-town Naples, Virginia to do a documentary of his mother Beth’s hometown. He also wants to learn more about her suicide two years ago in Connecticut. He meets two middle-aged, estranged brothers who each had loved her—Gil is a quiet stutterer, and Jack is taciturn. As the story progresses, Gates learns about the disappearance of Beth’s first child, and the brothers reveal the secrets of their earlier lives, hoping to help themselves move on.
A writer in Publishers Weekly had mixed opinions about the book, first saying that the characters are literary warhorses, the prose is overdone, and the small-town southern gothic is generic. Nevertheless, “the author wins us over with her undeniable gift for old-fashioned storytelling,” said the writer, adding that readers will be seduced by the tension built by the characters and their intertwined histories.
The Possible World
In 2018, Schwarz published The Possible World, set in Providence, Rhode Island and addressing themes of solitude, redemption, and the thread connecting people. Lucy is an overworked emergency-room intern attending to six-year-old Ben, the sole survivor of a murderous rampage at a birthday party that killed his mother. Ben is too traumatized to speak or remember what happened or anything about his life before the party. Lucy is drawn to him, wanting to help him recover, but she is dealing with her own trauma. As Ben insists on calling himself Leo, the doctors diagnose him with dissociative identity disorder, but Lucy believes he may be remembering a past life. Meanwhile, nursing home resident Clare is about to turn one hundred years old. Another resident wants Clare to tell her life story, but it’s apparent Clare has secrets she has kept for ages, including her real name. She has never shared her secrets before because she felt they wouldn’t matter to anyone.
The story of the three characters become linked with a secret revealed as far back as the Great Depression that travels through the Vietnam War up to modern times. “How these stories intertwine shows how the threads of human connection can tie us in ways beyond what is tangible, but also forces us to suspend belief at times,” explained Eileen Dunne commented online at RTE. However, Dunne also noted the confusing plot, characters that were difficult to empathize with, and passages in Spanish that were not translated.
Other critics found the book heartfelt. “Brimming with emotionally difficult moments and an enviable understanding of human nature, the novel will seize readers from the first scene and hold tight until its satisfying conclusion,” according to a Kirkus Reviews contributor. In a review in Booklist, Diana Platt observed: “Schwarz blends beautifully crafted prose with three highly compelling tales into one overarching saga of loss.” On the Washington Book Review Online, a writer observed that Schwarz’s three stories combine “into one entertaining story, showing how our pasts shape our present, and how some human bonds can help us overcome our emotional and psychological pain.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2018, Diana Platt, review of The Possible World, p. 24.
Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2018, review of The Possible World.
ONLINE
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (January 1, 1990), review of Near Canaan.
RTE, https://www.rte.ie/ (August 2, 2018), Eileen Dunne, review of The Possible World.
Washington Book Review Online, http://thewashingtonbookreview.com/ (June 29, 2018,), review of The Possible World.
Liese says: Please accept my sympathies if you have devoted any time at all to wondering how to pronounce my first name - it's Lee-zuh, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. My parents, bless them, were creative.
..........
Liese O'Halloran Schwarz grew up in Washington, DC after an early childhood overseas. She went to Harvard and then attended medical school at University of Virginia. While in medical school, she won the Henfield/Transatlantic Review Prize and also published her first novel, Near Canaan.
She specialized in emergency medicine and like most doctors, she can thoroughly ruin dinner parties with tales of medical believe-it-or-not. But she won't do that, because she knows how hard you worked to make a nice meal.
The Possible World, coming from Scribner (US) and Hutchinson (UK) in June 2018, is her second novel.
She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is at work on the next book.
Liese O’Halloran Schwarz, an emergency-medicine doctor, published her first novel Near Canaan while in medical school. Her most recent novel is The Possible World, and she currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Liese O’Halloran Schwarz, an emergency-room doctor, published her first novel, a Southern mystery entitled Near Canaan, while in medical school. Her new novel, The Possible World — which traces the converging lives of a young boy who witnesses a brutal murder, the ER doctor who tends to him, and an older woman guarding her long buried secrets — will be published in June 2018 by Scribner.
For information about subsidiary rights, please contact laura@lg-la.com
Liese O'Halloran Schwarz grew up in Washington, DC after an early childhood overseas. She attended Harvard University and then medical school at University of Virginia. While in medical school, she won the Henfield/Transatlantic Review Prize and also published her first novel, Near Canaan.
She specialized in emergency medicine and like most doctors, she can thoroughly ruin dinner parties with tales of medical believe-it-or-not. But she won't do that, because she knows how hard you worked to make a nice meal.
The Possible World, coming from Scribner (US) and Hutchinson (Random House UK/Cornerstone) in June 2018, is her second novel.
She currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is at work on the next book.
The Possible World
Diana Platt
Booklist. 114.18 (May 15, 2018): p24.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Possible World.
By Liese O'Halloran Schwarz.
June 2018. 368p. Scribner, $27 (9781501166143).
Schwarz's second novel (after Near Canaan, 1990) powerfully intertwines the stories of three apparent strangers. Ben is a bright and precocious 6-year-old when he attends a friend's birthday party--and becomes the only survivor of the murderous rampage that also took the life of his mother. The trauma of the incident has left him with no memory of the event or any of his life before arriving at the hospital. Lucy, a trauma resident, feels a strong connection to Ben, but she isn't sure exactly why or how she can help him. She's not exactly in the best place to heal a child with severe psychological trauma. She can barely handle her own. In a nearby nursing home, Clare is about to turn 100 years old. No one alive really knows her, not even her real name--and that's how she likes it. But if no one is left to tell her story, will she have really ever lived? Schwarz blends beautifully crafted prose with three highly compelling tales into one overarching saga of loss and memory.--Diana Piatt
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Platt, Diana. "The Possible World." Booklist, 15 May 2018, p. 24. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541400803/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=31ba02eb. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541400803
Schwarz, Liese O'Halloran: THE POSSIBLE WORLD
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Schwarz, Liese O'Halloran THE POSSIBLE WORLD Scribner (Adult Fiction) $27.00 6, 26 ISBN: 978-1-5011-6614-3
A young boy loses his mother to a violent crime and struggles with his own identity in the aftermath of tragedy.
Dr. Lucy Cole is slugging her way through another night on call in the emergency room when the police bring in a 6-year-old boy they'd rescued from a crime scene. The boy calls himself Leo, and he can't remember anything about either the crime or his life prior to that evening. As Lucy attempts to assess whether the blood covering the boy is his own, she feels a startling connection to the child. She soon discovers that Leo's real name is Ben, and his mother was among the victims murdered that evening, leaving him an orphan. The story then shifts perspective, and the reader is introduced to Clare, a woman of almost 100 who lives across town in a nursing home. Clare is surprisingly lucid and independent for a woman her age, and a new resident of the facility named Gloria is driving her crazy with constant requests to record her life story. It quickly becomes apparent that Clare has something to hide. As the story unfolds, the perspective continues to shift among Lucy, Ben, and Clare, each character slowly revealing more about his or her past. Lucy can't shake her interest in Ben and continues to visit him in the pediatric psych ward. The doctors believe Ben has dissociative identity disorder, but Lucy begins to wonder whether the boy actually used to be a person by the name of Leo, literally in another life. In hauntingly beautiful prose, Schwarz weaves a complicated story that spans nearly a century, from the Great Depression until the present day. Brimming with emotionally difficult moments and an enviable understanding of human nature, the novel will seize readers from the first scene and hold tight until its satisfying conclusion.
A bittersweet story full of imagination and nostalgia, loss and redemption.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Schwarz, Liese O'Halloran: THE POSSIBLE WORLD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534375202/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=83553bc7. Accessed 27 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534375202
Near Canaan
Liese O'Halloran Schwarz, Author Carroll & Graf Publishers $18.95 (332p) ISBN 978-0-88184-627-0
When N.Y.C. filmmaking student Buddy Gates turns up in Naples, Va., ostensibly to make a short documentary as a class project, he has actually come to his mother's home town searching for an explanation of her death in faraway Connecticut. He encounters two middle-aged brothers who once loved her: Gil, a sensitive stutterer who says almost nothing yet sees nearly everything, and Jack, who exhibits a manly taciturnity. Gradually Buddy's presence serves to reveal why Gil and Jack have not spoken in years: they share a dark secret about the long-ago disappearance of Beth Gates's first child. This first novel disappoints in several regards: the characters are, for the most part, literary warhorses; the prose is often overripe (``Goodbye was always in her, from the first,'' says Jack of Beth); and Schwartz's southern gothic landscape seems small-town generic. Still, the author wins us over with her undeniable gift for old-fashioned storytelling. If readers can accept her limitations as a stylist, they'll be seduced by the tension accumulating as the characters' intimately intertwined histories and mysteries are gradually unveiled. (Oct.)
DETAILS
Reviewed on: 01/01/1990
Release date: 01/01/1990