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11th can’t really be felt when you think of '3,000 dead.' Each person who died was someone particular, with a present and a past and each death scored deeply into numerous other lives that then had to go on. What inspired your approach, especially the ensemble construction of Absent Friends? You take a somewhat similar approach in Absent Friends, but from a much different, and very original, perspective. There are parallels to Small Town by Lawrence Block, which in part concerned how the terror attacks rippled through the lives of individuals who were connected to each other in ways which were not immediately obvious.

Reading this book recalls Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River since both deal with relationships and childhood friendships. It was NOT possible right then for me to write about anything else, so I began, tentatively, to try.Ģ. I began to think that writing about the event and about life in New York in the days and weeks after might be possible, that it would be valuable to record what was happening around me. But I’ve always believed that, while non-fiction deals with reality, fiction deals with truth. At first, writing fiction seemed completely meaningless, an impossibly trivial activity. Like a lot of writers, I was paralyzed by Sept.

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When did you decide to depart from your series writing and do a book that included 9/11/01 as a central event? Her ambitious ABSENT FRIENDS uses that event as the backdrop for a heartbreaking story about secrets, loyalty and our primal need for heroes.'ī questions for S.J. Rozan to the list of artists and writers addressing the legacy of 9/11. Rozan delivers a rich, sophisticated view of New Yorkers whose lives, like so many others, were so vastly changed on that September morning.' 'The story revolves around four boys and three girls - their childhoods, myriad backgrounds and families - and the men and women they become….

'Rozan, who has won all the crime-genre awards for her Bill Smith/Lydia Chin detective titles, breaks away from that series with a novel that could stand proudly beside those of the masters, Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos.'– The New York Daily News The final chapter is richly heartbreaking and awe-inspiring.' 'Absent Friends is a look at the nature of heroes, friendship, truth and self-knowledge…. … Without question one of the year’s standout novels.' 'ABSENT FRIENDS is a meditation on love, loss and enduring friendships as filtered through the shattering aftermath of 9/11. 'Rozan is a wonderful and insightful writer, and she creates an intricate, intimate portrait of a group of 40-something New Yorkers coping with a city in ruins.' Rozan … a gut-wrenching, beautifully and carefully written saga about life and about death, and about the heartache and the joy and the hope and the despair that occur in the time that passes between one and the other.' 'A riveting offering reminiscent of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River … unforgettable.' Now is the time to discover what Rozan’s loyal readership has known all along.' Rozan has written the most consistently compelling series of traditional detective novels published in this decade. 'Rozan has you looking over your shoulder into the dark.' To read her is to experience the kind of pure pleasure that only a master can deliver.' Rozan is, hands-down, one of my favorite crime writers working today. Rozan has written an ambitious, solemn, and ultimately hopeful book that shouldn’t be missed.'

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Full of surprises from page one, ABSENT FRIENDS is one of those–S.J. 'The best contemporary novels create context for shared experiences that somehow remain unfathomable. It’s an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it’s the one this great New York author was born to write.' 'Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response.

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