Meet Me in the In-Between - by Bella Pollen (Paperback)

In Meet Me in the In-Between, journalist, bestselling novelist, and former fashion designer Bella Pollen takes us on a captivating journey of a life, from her unorthodox childhood in Upper Manhattan through early marriage to a son of an alluring Mafioso, to the dusty border towns of Mexico where she falls in with a crowd of Pink Floyd-loving smugglers. Throughout all, Bella grapples in-tently with relationships, motherhood, career ups and downs, and a pathological fear of being boxed in. Interwoven with exquisite passages of graphic memoir by award-winning illustrator Kate Boxer, this is a tender, funny, and honest story of one woman's determination to keep looking for the extraordinary in an ordinary life.

Review Quotes

"Pollen captivatingly mixes graphics with prose to tell of her upbringing, swinging back and forth between binaries (transatlantic homes, riches-to-rags love affairs). Think Eat, Pray, Love-finding yourself, laughing, and taking what you need even when it's not what you wanted-only cooler."--Steph Opitz, Marie Claire

"How to know who you truly are and what you can become? With nothing firmly underfoot, Pollen pursues a quest for authenticity through unconventional and unpredictable encounters and thrives. Hers is a memoir of an indelible life full of incredible adventures."--Booklist

"Idiosyncratic...poignant, beautifully written."--Mail on Sunday (UK)

"Pointedly astute...Meet Me in the In-Between displays the disjointedness of a life, how whims and flings don't make existence―or a woman―any less meaningful. It's in the spaces among all these things that something magical breathes and resists capture. As Pollen illustrates in her sharp, nearly wry voice, it is not our memories that will lead us to an understanding of the self, but the act of maneuvering among them, as though they are a crowd blocking the self from view."―Zyzzyva

"Captivating."―Tatler

"Brava . . . Pollen's account of bohemian family life and outrageous mafia-in-laws is funny, poignant and acute."―The Spectator

"Funny, startling and unexpectedly poignant."―The New Statesman

"Pollen has a way with caustic description that evinces a love for the evocative qualities of language . . . From the beginning (she) revels in a self-absorption that should be off-putting, but her clever way with words is so self-deprecating that she is immediately likeable."―Santa Fe New Mexican

"Frequently disturbing, often very funny. Pollen has a gift for playing with her readers, teasing them, shocking them, having fun with their assumptions before shaking them out of their complacency to reveal underlying and often very moving profundities. The intimacy of Pollen's prose invites inclusion into the most private conversations she has with herself, her self-mocking humour rippling through . . . unforgettable."―Daily Telegraph (UK)

"Funny, risky, racy, stunningly visual, and beyond poignant, Bella Pollen's offbeat memoir is a one-of-a-kind adventure start to finish."--Jenny McPhee, author of The Centre of Things and A Man of No Moon

About the Author