Joseph Olshan

THE CONVERSION

Public Radio Interview-Listen

A BookSense Pick - May 2008
Joseph Olshan's The Conversion is delicately, yet powerfully, rendered, taking the reader through layers, twists, and turns to a surprise ending in a novel of deep and intricate characterization. Beginning in Paris, the characters travel to an Italian villa that is so carefully and evocatively described that it, too, becomes one of Olshan's beautifully drawn characters. A must read."

Vogue Magazine - May 2008
“Joseph Olshan channels Andre Aciman in The Conversion (St. Martins), a vetiver-scented intrigue featuring a young American translator, a dead lover's missing manuscript, and a crumbling Italian villa, all of which come to bear a stunning affirmation of art's ability to ravage and redeem us.”

National Public Radio (All Things Considered)) -Listen
"The novel...sparks and glistens. We're really caught up in this tangle of love, honor,memory and future hopes...Joseph Olshan puts us readers in a world that's quite fascinating."

San Francisco Chronicle
The Conversion gives us the terrifically well-composed story of a young expatriate writer in France and Italy and his apprenticeship in art and life… Olshan's deeply passionate work… flows along beautifully, always leading the reader onward and rewarding in the best ways a novel rewards: putting you in a world you never made but become convinced is yours to inhabit. And perhaps a place afterward to recall with balanced affection.”

Valley News Interview - April 18/08

Valley News
"Olshan draws on the tradition of writers like James, Edith Wharton, William Dean Howells and more recently, Diane Johnson, Andrea Lee and Valerie Martin, all Americans who have lived or live in Europe and who take as their subject the clash of sensibilities that can arise from the mingling of American and European cultures.
He writes eloquently about the space between that the ex-pats occupy, neither fully nor wholly American...a sympathetic and poignant account almost a coming-of-age novel, of a young man seeking grace and redemption.”

Curled Up With a Good Book
“This lovely novel…is loaded with symbolism and metaphor…a beautifully constructed allegory of an artist's life where the prerogatives of the past are constantly intruding upon the present. Passionate, sexy, and powerful, The Conversion eventually symbolizes one young man's compulsion to break free of an unhealthy pattern and an unfinished life that ultimately is defined by the power of the written word." (Blog authority 253)

The Times Argus
“Elegant...sophisticated...that he (the narrator) seems so extremely authentic and human is a testament to Olshan's literary gifts."

Kirkus Reviews
"Time and sexual boundaries are transcended in Olshan’s eighth novel (In Clara’s Hands, 2001, etc.). Thirty-one-year-old writer Russell Todaro has moved from New York to Paris to work as a freelance translator and to find inspiration for his own writing. When Edward Cannon, his older lover and an accomplished poet, dies of a heart attack after an armed robbery attempt in their hotel room, Russell finds Ed’s unfinished memoir. He must decide whether to honor his friend’s wishes and prevent publication or hand it over to Ed’s grasping executrix back in New York. In the year they were together Russell never fully returned Ed’s love, rather treating him as an esteemed friend and mentor. Before his death, Ed had introduced Russell to Marina, whose prize-winning novel set during World War II describes Jews hidden in a Tuscan convent who later convert to Catholicism. Awaiting the outcome of Ed’s inquest and badgered by his executrix into admitting he has the memoir, Russell visits Marina’s villa in Tuscany. A break-in at her estate and the death of her husband hint at a political drama that is loosely sketched and never clarified. Meanwhile, Russell’s decision to destroy Ed’s memoir does not offer the emotional release Russell seeks. Only when he lets go of the past—and receives an unexpected gift—can he fulfill his promise as a writer. The relationships between Olshan’s characters are sultry and multifaceted, mapped across a richly delineated landscape of intimacy and yearning. European sensibility and sensuality add new dimensions to Olshan's writing."