Cultural Writing. Essays. GOSSIP is a collection of personal essays that covers themes from a woman's life, ranging from love magic to marriage, old boyfriends to solitude. At the age of fifty, the author learns to shoot a gun for the first time and confront fear. There are essays here on on language and meaning--including ethical wills, blessings, and credos. And memoirs that chart a course including young widowhood, raising a child, a re-union with a high school boyfriend, re-marriage, and ventures into middle age. As Laurie Wagner says: "Sagan is writer whose obsessive ability to observe the ordinary details of domestic life--the nuance of motherhood, marriage and friendship--allow her to lift the veil on the mundane, the things we take for granted, to reveal their more sacred properties. Reading these stories reminded me that I don't have to go far to find beauty and magic in my life, that it might be waiting for me in a simple bowl of mole."