Books & Books, the Coral Gables-born independent bookstore, will host a virtual launch Sunday for Come Closer, the new book by New York psychoanalyst Dr. Galit Atlas, with a cross-disciplinary lineup of guests: novelist and filmmaker Miranda July, British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, comedian Gary Gulman and Israeli singer-songwriter Noga Erez.
The online event begins at 1 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27, two days before the book’s Sept. 29 release. Tickets are required, and the program will be recorded for ticketholders who cannot watch live.
Six childhood wounds carried into adult love
Come Closer: Childhood Wounds, Adult Love, and the Secrets of Emotional Intimacy examines how patterns repeated in adult relationships can trace back to how people were loved — or not loved — as children.
Atlas organizes the book around six archetypes: the frightened child, the melancholic child, the ashamed child, the invisible child, the guilty child and the chosen child. Through stories drawn from her patients and her own life, she follows those early wounds into adulthood, examining how they can shape the partners people choose, the conflicts they repeat and the ways they approach or retreat from intimacy.
As in her earlier work, Atlas places herself inside the narrative as well, including a profound personal loss and changes in her own work as a therapist. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review and said it would resonate with readers of Lori Gottlieb, Esther Perel and Irvin Yalom. Memoirist Meghan O’Rourke called it “deeply humane.”
The book, published by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, runs 320 pages and carries a $30 list price. It goes on sale Sept. 29.
A return visit, with a larger cast
This is not Atlas’s first launch with Books & Books. In February 2022, the bookstore and Miami Book Fair hosted a Sunday-afternoon virtual event for her previous book, Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma, in conversation with novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro.
That book became an international bestseller. Atlas’s work has since been translated into 29 languages. She teaches in New York University’s postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis and at Columbia University’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. A leading figure in relational psychoanalysis, Atlas won a 2016 Gradiva Award for her New York Times essay “A Tale of Two Twins.”
Her guests range well beyond the consulting room.
July’s 2024 novel All Fours, about a woman confronting midlife, marriage and reinvention, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.
Phillips, formerly principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London, is a practicing psychoanalyst and essayist and general editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations.
Gulman has turned his own struggles with depression into both comedy and memoir, including the HBO special The Great Depresh and his book Misfit. Erez, a singer, songwriter and producer, moves among pop, electronic music, hip-hop and other genres.
If you go — (from home)…
Come Closer: A Virtual Launch Event with Dr. Galit Atlas and Special Guests streams at 1 p.m. EDT Sunday, Sept. 27. Tickets are required and start at $41.64 through Books & Books’ Eventbrite page.
Each ticket includes a copy of the book and shipping within the United States and Canada, with books expected to ship within one to three business days after the event. International viewers can choose a ticket that includes a PDF edition instead. The event will be recorded and shared with all ticketholders, so buyers who cannot watch live will still receive access.
