Anne Bernays Books In Order

Novels

Growing Up Rich (1975)
The School Book (1980)
The Address Book (1983)
Professor Romeo (1984)
Trophy House (2005)
Domestic Partners (2008)
The Man on the Third Floor (2012)

Non fiction

What If? (1990)
The Language of Names (1997)
Back Then (2002)

Novels Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Anne Bernays Books Overview

Professor Romeo

An academic Don Juan collides with contemporary feminism.

Trophy House is an extraordinary and complex novel, at one level a romantic thriller, at another a deeply satisfying story about the disintegration of a marriage and the consequences for all concerned that rare piece of fiction that is at once thrilling, grown up and completely believable. It begins with the construction of a totally inappropriate and enormous house a ‘Trophy House‘ which unexpectedly comes to threaten the tranquillity of what appears to be one woman’s perfect life and marriage. Dannie Faber has lots of reasons to feel blessed. A children’s book illustrator, she shares a loving marriage with Tom, an M.I.T. professor, with whom she divides her time between one of Boston’s finest suburbs and a beloved beach house in Truro, on Cape Cod. And then, for reasons she could not possibly have foreseen, Dannie’s life begins to unravel. With Trophy House, Anne Bernays author of Professor Romeo and Growing Up Rich delivers a poignant, funny, and ultimately wrenching story of adults in peril and the unlikely hope for romance that, in the end, becomes the key to surviving events that are beyond their control. It is a brilliant and moving portrait of a marriage.

What If?

What If?? is the first handbook for writers based on the idea that specific exercises are one of the most useful and provocative methods for mastering the art of writing fiction. With more than twenty five years of experience teaching creative writing between them, Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter offer more than seventy five exercises for both beginners and more experienced writers. These exercises are designed to develop and refine two basic skills: writing like a writer and, just as important, thinking like a writer. They deal with such topics as discovering where to start and end a story; learning when to use dialogue and when to use indirect discourse; transforming real events into fiction; and finding language that both sings and communicates precisely. What If?? will be an essential addition to every writer’s library, a welcome and much used companion, a book that gracefully borrows a whisper from the muse.

The Language of Names

As delightful and playful as it is profound and serious, The Language of Names is an absolute original a fascinating book that reveals us to ourselves, that demonstrates the endless variety of ways in which names shape our daily lives. Drawing on social and literary history, psychology and anthropology, anecdotes, and life stories, biographer Justin Kaplan and novelist Anne Bernays have written a fascinating account of names and naming in contemporary society that touches on class structure, ethnic and religious practices, manners, and everyday life. Graceful, eloquent, and richly informed, The Language of Names explores and illuminates our favorite subject ourselves.

Back Then

Infused with intelligence and charm, Back Then is an elegant reflection on transformative years in the lives of two young people and New York City. Marked by their youthful passion, this double memoir marries the authors’ distinct literary styles with a riveting narrative that captures the density and texture of private, social, and working life in the 1950s. Novelist Anne Bernays, born in 1930, and biographer Justin Kaplan, born in 1925, both natives of New York, came of age in the 1950s, when the pent up energies of the Depression years and World War II were at flood tide. Back Then, written in two separate voices, is the candid, anecdotal account of two children of privilege, one from New York’s East Side, the other from the West Side, pursuing careers in publishing and eventually leaving to write their own books. They both sought self knowledge and realization through years of psychoanalysis. They brushed shoulders with celebrities like William Faulkner, Somerset Maugham, Marlene Dietrich, and Anatole Broyard. Before Bernays and Kaplan met and married, each had enjoyed the sexual and social freedom that, along with the dark shadow of McCarthyism and the Cold War, was among the distinguishing marks of the 1950s. In many other respects, the story they tell could almost as well be about an earlier era. This vibrant, balanced memoir offers an indelible portrait of postwar New York exhilarating, hospitable, and affordable. A striking collaboration by two prominent figures in American letters, Back Then surprises and delights as Bernays and Kaplan recall their youthful pursuits, the merging of their lives, and the city’s underlying influence on them.