Joined at the head / by Catherine Butterfield.

71 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.

Maggie Mulroney is on a promotional tour for her novel JOINED AT THE HEAD when she gets an invitation to visit with her old high school flame, Jim, and his wife (also named Maggy) who is dying of cancer. The two women strike up an immediate friendship notwithstanding the total disparity in their characters: Maggie the novelist is intensely self-examining and analytical while Maggy, even in the throes of her illness, retains a warm and giving response to the world and others. Maggie acts as the play’s narrator from time to time, commenting upon the process of her writing while also shrewdly dissecting her relationship to her former boyfriend’s wife. As Maggy’s illness becomes the central question in all their lives, Jim and Maggie begin to confront their own assumptions about mortality, ambition and what it means to make a truly lasting impression in this world. In this riveting portrait of self-awakening, art and life come fluidly to interact as Maggie’s instinct for the fictitious collides with a newfound yearning to relate to life with the immediacy of her newest, closest friend.

1m, 2w, extras.

Women

D B9881jo 1993