"There are nights when the fog rests thick on
North Main Street and the sounds from passing cars are all but muffled
to oblivion before they reach my door. On nights like those, when the
hour is late and morning is closer than midnight, I slip into an old
army jacket and sit out on my front steps to listen to the silence and
feel the soft isolation in the fog. And sometimes I think about old
friends."
Old Friends and Foggy Nights
$24.00
Ilan
Fisher's insightful and delightful columns wonderfully capture
the charm and depth of suburban New England. Readers are
taken on a warm tour through a place called Sharon filled with
humor and a quixotic look at the human experience.
Dan
Rosenfeld
Executive City Editor Boston Herald
The Carnie
Kid is a collection of warm, insightful and refreshingly
human observations about life in a small town. But in
truth, their lessons also resonate in the big city, the open
prairie and just about any place in between.
Mark
Jurkowitz
Media Writer Boston Globe
For almost a decade, columnist Ilan
Fisher's lovingly descriptive prose was mostly a private reserve for
readers of his hometown newspaper, The Sharon Advocate.
Often posted by magnet on refrigerator doors alongside school menus
and favorite drawings, his columns were revisited time and again.
For the first time in The Carnie
kid tells all, Fisher has brought together some of his best known
stories. He fields a sensitivity of place and characters rare in
column writing. Some stories provide a breathless race through
life's absurdities. Some will make you cry.
Writer/photographer
Ilan
Fisher lives in Sharon, Massachusetts with his wife, Jody, and son,
Zev. His daughter, Tamara, is an attorney in Boston.
He is the winner of nine New
England Press Association (NEPA) and Massachusetts Press Association (MPA)
awards, including three first-place awards between 1993-1997. He
was recognized by NEPA for both his serious and humorous columns.
Fisher's work has appeared in The
Sharon Advocate and many other Community Newspaper Company (CNC)
publications.
Additional Publications: The
Foxboro Reporter, WBUR radio, Vermont Mountain Villager,
and Cranberries Magazine (including cover photo).
Get
your copy...
Available in the Sharon area at:
The
Book & Cup
24 Pond Street
Sharon, MA 02067
(781) 784-0600
Annie's
Book Stop
Sharon Heights Plaza
Sharon, MA 02067
(781) 784-4306
Heart
& Stars Bookshop
Village Shoppes
Canton, MA 02021
(781) 821-1515
Visions
16 Washington Street
Canton, MA 02021
(781) 828-9338
To order online and pay by credit
card using PayPal, click the logo below.
To order through the mail,
send your check or
money order for $24. plus $4.95 s&h (within U.S.) to:
The Carnie Kid
c/o The Tamarac Press
291 Tamarac Street
Warren, VT 05674
(VT residents:
add $1.20 sales tax)
If you have a question or
special request, send us an e-mail.
More
reviews...
First published
as a series of weekly columns in the nickel newspaper, The
Sharon Advocate, Fisher's writing chronicles small town
life against the backdrop of the second half of the 20th
century.
In troubled
times, The Carnie Kid tells all won't make the world
outside go away, but it will cast you under its spell for a
while. And that's a very nice place to be.
Melody
Howard Ritt, former editor, The Sharon Advocate
For years, Ilan
Fisher shared his life, his thoughts, his politics and his
passion with his neighbors in a column that ran in his
hometown newspaper, The Sharon Advocate. In The
Carnie Kid tells all, Fisher offers a collection of
columns that are, in many ways, as important and entertaining
now as they were when they first "hit the streets"
in the 1990s. Balancing the poignant with the playful, The
Carnie Kid tells all is a lazy Sunday read written in
honest prose like a lunchtime conversation with a best friend.
Fred
Lewis, feature editor, MetroWest Daily News
“An extraordinary little book... a loving view of life in a small town...His prose is lyrical... myth and reality become one.”
Sylvia Rothchild, winner, National Jewish Book Award,
The Jewish Advocate
Any keen
observer of the human condition, anyone who appreciates
tradition, family relationships and the humps and bumps of
everyday life, or the occasional need to poke a little fun at
ourselves, will find a comfort zone somewhere between the
covers of The Carnie Kid tells all.
Fisher
fosters appreciation for other cultures and paints such
delightful word pictures of places and events, we must have
experienced them ourselves; how else could they seem so
intimately our own? It is a great read, a respite from a
world gone mad, a shifting of balance to get our lives back on
track and into perspective.
The Carnie
Kid brought me back to a deeper appreciation for the everyday
things and everyday people who make up my world. Well
done.
Jack
Authelet, author, columnist, former editor NEPA Bulletin
A Sharon High School, grade 11, required summer
reading selection
Writer/photographer
Ilan
Fisher lives in Sharon, Massachusetts with his wife, Jody, and son,
Zev. His daughter, Tamara, is an attorney in Boston.