Stealing Beauty

Susan Minot, Novelist Susan Minot was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Manchester-by-the-Sea. She studied writing and painting at Brown University and received an MFA in writing from Columbia University. She published short stories in Grand Street and The New Yorker, which led to an offer for a novel. Minot has also been a Greenpeace activist, a carpenter and a bookseller.

Minot's first novel, "Monkeys," took nine stories about the Vincent family and combined them to make up the semi-autobiographical novel. It won the Prix Femina Etranger in France in 1987. The Vincent's are a New England family of seven children, a Catholic mother and a Brahmin background father. The story covers twelve years of their lives and tells of a tragic accident that alters their lives. Her second novel, "Lust & Other Stories," is a collection about artists and journalists living in New York City. It examines the relations between men and women in their twenties and thirties, and the difficulty they have coming together and breaking apart. "Folly" takes place in Boston, during the 1920's to 1930's, and tells the story of a woman with a strict Brahmin background having the choice of a husband being the determining factor of her life. "Evening" is the story of Ann Lord on her deathbed. She relives a weekend love affair with Harris Arden, the greatest love of her life, in great detail, while her children stand by her believing her mind is blank.

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