Jill Ciment esplora nella sua opera la complessità delle relazioni umane e la ricerca dell'identità. La sua prosa è caratterizzata da un'acuta intuizione della psicologia dei personaggi e da una meticolosa cura del linguaggio. Ciment affronta temi come la memoria, la perdita e la resilienza di fronte alle sfide della vita. Le sue opere invitano i lettori a riflettere sui drammi silenziosi che si svolgono nella vita di tutti i giorni.
Gloria, a modern "snake-oil" saleswoman, travels from town to town with her teenaged daughter, Kim, but her life abruptly changes when Kim falls in love with Arthur, a gentle widower, thirty years her senior
A 52 year-old photographer and a 41 year-old anatomy professor are jurors sequestered during a sensational three-week trial: a toddler murdered by one of his twin sisters. At the court appointed cut-rate motel off the interstate, they fall into an intense, furtive affair, but it is only during deliberations that the lovers learn they are on opposing sides of the case. Suddenly they look at one another through an altogether different lens. After the trial, the photographer returns to her much older husband amidst an ongoing media frenzy over the case. But the judge has received an anonymous letter about the affair, and she is preparing to release the jurors names. From that point on, the photographer's "one last dalliance before she is too old" takes on profoundly personal and moral consequences, as The Body in Question moves to its affecting, powerful, and surprising conclusion.*** NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ***