Magnetism

An older woman on a quest to find her eros and to be desired.

A woman over sixty wants her sexuality, her eros back. It opens with the main character going on a date alone, walks herself along the High Line in New York, shops for a book at The Strand and goes to hear Mahler. She remembers the past when she had that juiciness, and she finds lovers in the present, but something is amiss. She has a friendship with a female holocaust survivor who lives upstairs, who has that eros, even over 80, just in her being. The older woman dies, but in the lessons she leaves behind, the narrator finally finds that eros within her attitude toward life.
Award: Leapfrog Press Finalist
Quote: "Mira sat down across from her. ''The thing about ending up old, broke, alone is you feel so stupid. But it''s not like one had a choice. The real tragedy is if you could not put yourself forward in youth . . . you pay . . . now. Thus you pay young and you pay old. In the middle you run around with your head cut off.''
Lucia looked down at her newspaper. ''Your real problem is you have a boyfriend who doesn''t want to kiss you.''
Mira ignored that. ''What I like about your book, by the way, is that it''s vulnerable. And risky. And you just keep going. That is what I like so much. You just kept going.''