num_pages: 192
description: Alison Lurie , one of America's greatest novelists, has written a loving memoir of world-famous poet James Merrill and his longtime partner David Jackson. Drawing on her forty-year friendship with Merrill and Jackson, Lurie reveals the couple's deep involvement with ghosts, gods, and spirits, with whom they communicated through a Ouija board. Among the results of their intense twenty-year preoccupation with the occult is the brilliant book-length poem "The Changing Light at Sandover", which Merrill called his "chronicles of love and loss." Recalling Merrill and Jackson's life together in New York, Athens, and Key West, Familiar Spirits is a poignant memoir infused with great affection and generous amounts of Lurie's signature wit.
language: English
title: Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson
titlecomplete: Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson
genres: Biography, LGBT, Poetry, Nonfiction, Memoir
ratings_count: 117
awards: awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Biography
publisher: Penguin Books