This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: May 29, 2008 - Local cinephiles might consider temporarily abandoning the darkness of the movie theater for the bright lights of the bookstore on Thursday, June 5, when novelist Marisa Silver reads from her lauded new work, “The God of War,” at Left Bank Books , 399 N. Euclid Ave.
Although she’s now switched careers – firmly establishing herself as a writer with regular appearances in the New Yorker, the story collection “Babe in Paradise” and the novel “No Direction Home” – Silver should also be familiar to discerning filmgoers. She made her feature writing-directing debut with “Old Enough” in 1984, and went on to helm “Permanent Record” (1988) and “Vital Signs” (1990). St. Louisans might best remember her for “He Said, She Said” (1991), which was written by native son Brian Hohlfeld and co-directed by Silver with Belleville, Ill., native Ken Kwapis, to whom she’s married. The St. Louis International Film Festival hosted both Kwapis and Silver in 2001, when we screened “He Said, She Said” as part of our 10th-anniversary celebration of St. Louis cinema.
It should be further noted that Kwapis is scarcely Silver’s only family connection to the film business: Her mother is pioneering American indie filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street,” “Between the Lines,” “Head Over Heels”), and her father is producer-director Raphael Silver (“On the Yard”).
Silver’s “The God of War,” which the Library Journal calls “a dark and devastating coming-of-age story,” has received some rapturous reviews, with TimeOut New York declaring that the novel “establishes her on the cusp of literary mastery.”* The free reading begins at 7 p.m., which allows you plenty of time to attend before heading two miles east to Cinema St. Louis’ co-presentation of “Light Works” at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts later that night.