<DIV>Award-winning novelist, poet and essayist, Lynne Sharon Schwartz returns with what is perhaps her most personal book yet. These memoirs, gathered under the title of ?Intimacies,” are exactly that. Intimate recollections of her life, beginning with her serious heart-valve surgery and ranging back in time, to going to movies as a child, her relationship with her complicated and challenging parents, her own difficulties with intimacy and anger, thoughts about long friendships, and the pure delight of grandchildren. It will surprise none of her readers that after a lifetime of playing the piano and moving one from place to place for her entire adulthood, she finds a different, richer sort of fulfillment as a middle-aged woman taking drum lessons in Manhattan. Every piece in this wonderful collection is an adventure.<br><BR>In this her twentieth book, Schwartz remains, as was said by Frederick Busch, ?precise and unflinching.” She is a writer of captivating honesty, about herself, those around her, and the world at large. These recollections are certain to move and disturb as well as enlighten and entertain. This book affirms that Lynne Sharon Schwartz is one of the finest writers of her generation.<BR></DIV>