Shelley Gilbert, Author's Blog

Shelley Gilbert, author of "Swimming Naked with Jellyfish" has her own blog. Click Here to read it now.

Swimming Naked with Jellyfish

The coming-of-age story of a girl who hates semicolons, loves extremes, and lives her life exposed.
CHAPTER ONE • BUY THE BOOK Amazon.com

"Shelley Gilbert's prose is wonderfully vivid and straightforward...

the writing is compelling... and though the story confronts rather grave issues, Iris’s witty, accessible tone makes an ideal balance that encourages readers to keep the pages turning."

IRIS ANDREA, with her father's defiant spirit, confronts her grief over the rapid loss of family members by writing her memoir.

She flashes back into her early life growing up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in the 1950s and 60s, then fast forwards to an immediate presence of understanding. Connecting past to present, Iris begins to discover and maintain her identity, her sense of self and self-worth. She unearths intense childhood anger for her beloved, tyrant father, passive mother and jealous sister. But as the dust settles, she finds love for her family is also hiding in the belly of her heart.

Iris describes how childhood encounters with her violent father forge her backbone into a thunderbolt. How her freedom-loving nature rebels against the trapped submissive females of her family and seeks escape with the uninhibited males. She discloses all her firsts, an insecure and sensually budding adolescence…throbbing in the birth of Rock and Roll, her taste in men, her shame and attempted suicide, failed marriage, her great passion, and tragedy.

In this powerful memoir, Iris realizes she is always searching...searching to fill the holes in her whole.