Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Straub, Emma (2013) Paperback

“If someone were going to write a movie about Laura's life, they would have to start here. There would be panning shots of cherry trees, the round red fruit hanging delicately off the thin stems. It would be the story of a girl and her sisters and their father…She wasn't the star of a romance, but a family drama, and a farce, and a tragedy. It seemed impossible to fit all the people she'd ever been into a single body, let alone a single moment.” “The children called her Mother or Mama, her parents and Josephine called her Elsa in their letters, Harriet called her Miss Emerson, and Ginger called her Laura, which was what she called herself. The trick seemed to be commitment: Elsa Emerson was a good Wisconsin girl. Laura Lamont was going to be a star.” “There were only a handful of moments Laura could think of, in the span of her entire life, when she was unable to identify the seam in between what she felt and what she said or did, moments during which all of the selves that she'd ever been lined up perfectly, with no cracks in between. “When she found her sister's body, when Florence was born, when Clara first smiled, when Josephine called to say that their father had died, when she saw Irving hold their son in his arms for the first time, when she kissed Irving for the first time, when she and Irving first saw and touched and kissed each other's bodies for the first time, when they were married, and when she knew she was his, forever, forever, forever.” “Lucky. Laura had never thought of herself as lucky…not since she'd shed the skin of Elsa Emerson and become this other, more glamorous beast. For that was how she thought of herself: the snake that had lived inside the body of a kitten. What was it for? Laura thought of Hildy, her beautiful sister…who had wanted to be a movie star…Laura was lucky…to have lived when Hildy had not. She was lucky to have three healthy, beautiful children. And she was lucky that she could get to choose what happened next.” “No one could tell Laura Lamont what to do…Laura was going to sew herself into the shape of happiness all on her own.” Emma Straub’s Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures is a motion picture masterpiece!