The artist and author Rosalie Wise Sharp discusses her memoir Me & Issy: A Four Seasons Romance (ECW Press, 2022), with Joseph Planta.

Me & Issy: A Four Seasons Romance by Rosalie Wise Sharp (ECW Press, 2022). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Me & Issy

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

One of the more fascinating and memorable memoirs from this past fall is the book by Rosalie Wise Sharp, Me & Issy: A Four Seasons Romance. In the book, with honesty and frankness, she recounts her troubled and deprived childhood, a marriage of over seventy years now to Isadore Sharp, the founder of the Four Seasons Hotels, and raising a family of four boys. It’s a life that has had great successes in business, family, as well art and design, but one not without tragedy; the loss of their son Chris, as well as family members killed during the Holocaust. The book also features a number of Rosalie’s paintings. There are stories about family, the kids, grandkids, and now great-grandkids; and the glittering, bold-faced names she found seated with at dinners. As well as her own success as an interior designer and painter. At the book’s heart though is this partnership with her husband Issy, and how their mutual love and respect has yielded a fantasy life of opulence and luxury, as well as generosity and devotion. Rosalie Wise Sharp is the editor of Growing Up Jewish, and the author of Rifke, Ceramics, Ethics and Scandal, and China to Light Up a House. Her website www.RosalieWiseSharp.com showcases over two hundred of her paintings. The book is published by ECW Press. We spoke this past weekend. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Rosalie Wise Sharp; Mrs. Sharp, good morning.

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