{"product_id":"she-read-to-us-in-thelate-afternoons-a-life-in-novels-paperback","title":"She Read to Us in Thelate Afternoons: A Life in Novels - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eKathleen Hill\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\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\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 225\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.7 x 8.2 x 5.4 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 24, 2017\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42150832210055,"sku":"9781883285746","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0601\/2623\/2711\/files\/71620848125e0615df9e822b333c8f8d.webp?v=1733202621","url":"https:\/\/booksby.splitshops.com\/products\/she-read-to-us-in-thelate-afternoons-a-life-in-novels-paperback","provider":"Books by splitShops","version":"1.0","type":"link"}