I sometimes think I was born reading … I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me.
A celebration of passionate reading from the acclaimed author and critic
In nine stunning essays, the inimitable Vivian Gornick returns to the books that have shaped her. From a reporter in 1970s New York, to a feminist negotiating love and independence, to a writer in the jubilant sanctity of older age: Gornick’s life is compelling, and in the characters of literature she finds versions of herself through the years, each time she opens the page.
Gornick finds solace in the contradictory figures of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, assesses womanhood in Colette, and reflects on Marguerite Duras’s The Lover; she revisits Great War novels by J.L. Carr and Pat Barker, uncovers the psychological complexity in Elizabeth Bowen, and soaks in Natalia Ginzberg, ‘whose work … made me love life more’. When two erratic, highly strung cats enter her life, she discovers Doris Lessing’s Particularly Cats.
Infused with Gornick’s trademark verve and insight, this collection is a masterful appreciation of literature and its ability to illuminate.
‘Literature knows few champions as ardent or insightful — or as uncompromising — which is to readers’ good fortune.’ —Kirkus
A propos de l’auteur
Vivian Gornick is the author of several books, including the acclaimed memoir Fierce Attachments, and The Odd Woman and the City, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Her work has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Nation, The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic.
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