{"product_id":"she-read-to-us-in-thelate-afternoons-a-life-in-novels-9781883285746","title":"She Read to Us in Thelate Afternoons: A Life in Novels","description":"\u003cp\u003eBeginning with a Best American award-winning narrative, Kathleen Hill's memoir explores defining moments of a life illuminated by novels, read in Nigeria and France and at home in New York. As a child in a music class where a remarkable teacher watches over a classmate marked for tragedy, the author by chance reads Willa Cather's novel, \u003ci\u003eLucy Gayheart\u003c\/i\u003e, and is prepared against her will for death by drowning. And prepared for the teacher's confessions to the class of a frustrated ambition to become a pianist, her regret for a life that will never be. Later, recently married and living in a newly independent Nigeria, a teacher now herself, the author gives Achebe's \u003ci\u003eThings Fall Apart\u003c\/i\u003e to her students and is instructed by them in the violent legacy of colonialism. And loses her American innocence when she visits a nearby abandoned slave port and connects its rusting shackles with the students sitting before her. Reading \u003ci\u003eA Portrait of a Lady\u003c\/i\u003e, also in Nigeria, she ponders her own new marriage through the lens of Isabel Archer's cautionary fate, remembers her own adolescent fear that reading might be a way of avoiding experience. A few years later, this time in a town in northern France, haunted by \u003ci\u003eMadame Bovary\u003c\/i\u003e, by Emma's solitude and boredom, she puts aside Flaubert's novel and discovers in Bernanos' \u003ci\u003eDiary of a Country Priest\u003c\/i\u003e the poverty and suffering she had failed to see all around her. The memoir closes with a tender account of the author's friendship with the writer, Diana Trilling, whose failing sight inspires a plan to read aloud Proust's masterwork, an undertaking that takes six years to complete. Faced with Diana's approaching death and the mysteries of her own life, the author wonders whether reading after all may not be experience at its most ardent, its most transforming.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHill, Kathleen:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Kathleen Hill is the author of two previous novels. Her first novel, \u003ci\u003eStill Waters in Niger\u003c\/i\u003e was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and named a Notable Book of the Year by The \u003ci\u003eNew York Times, Los Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e. It was also selected for The Quality Paperback Book Club. The French translation, \u003ci\u003eEaux Tranquilles\u003c\/i\u003e, was shortlisted for the \u003ci\u003ePrix Femina Etranger\u003c\/i\u003e. Her second novel \u003ci\u003eWho Occupies This House\u003c\/i\u003e was an editor's choice at the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e. One essay included in \u003ci\u003eShe Read to Us in the Late Afternoons\u003c\/i\u003e was selected as one of the \u003ci\u003eBest American Short Stories\u003c\/i\u003e as well as \u003ci\u003eThe Pushcart Prize XXV\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Pushcart Book of Short Stories\u003c\/i\u003e; another, published in \u003ci\u003ePloughshares\u003c\/i\u003e, went on to be released in an Amazon Kindle that was selected as One of the \u003ci\u003eBest Kindle Singles of 2014\u003c\/i\u003e. She teaches in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College.","brand":"Delphinium Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50856986902802,"sku":"9781883285746","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_c20bc17e-f460-4088-886c-104cf4e8343e.jpg?v=1737517131","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/she-read-to-us-in-thelate-afternoons-a-life-in-novels-9781883285746","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}