With the recent plethora of memoirs delving into traumatic lives and despairing experiences, this quiet memoir from the author of The Book of Knowledge and Fifty Days of Solitude is charmingly refreshing. We follow the 77-year-old novelist through a day, eavesdropping on her daily fussings and the interior conversations she conducts with the muses that enable her to write, including Dylan Thomas, Somerset Maugham, and her friend, the late May Sarton. With digressive sidetrips inspired by whatever distracts Grumbach from her quiet daily processes, we enter a rich world of memory and thought informed by a lifetime of books and letters. Sorry, no teenage traumas or bouts with alchoholism or bulimia here--just a fine artist at the top of her craft.
From Publishers Weekly
A day spent puttering about with a 77-year-old retiree living on the coast of Maine doesn't promise high adventure. Reality turns out quite differently. Grumbach has spent her adult life in the world of books and writers as a novelist and critic; her longtime companion is a rare book dealer. Every step she takes is an intellectual adventure, evoking memories of books she has read, writers she has known. The one defining event of this quiet day is a cruel one: a stingingly negative New York Times review of her novel The Book of Knowledge comes in the mail. Unflinchingly, Grumbach faces a verdict that begins: "This is rather a nasty book...." She even includes a facsimile of the review here so the reader may share her feelings. "Rejection," she realizes "is an affliction as painful as shingles or loss of a limb." Grumbach's struggles to sit at the computer and write will be agonizingly familiar to writers, in fact to all procrastinators. She begins to transcribe some handwritten notes but is distracted into searching for a quotation in Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up?"that never-bettered book of sage counsel from an accomplished writer based on his own long, successful career." The quiet pace of her day, layered with side trips into a lifetime's storehouse of words and thoughts, is seductive. Despite occasional grumblings about technology and general modern aggravations, this is a profoundly optimistic book: a validation of the strength and the tranquillity to be found within the confines of the human mind. Illustrations. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Grumbach's refreshing frankness enlivens this chronicle of an "ordinary but hypersensitive" day, a day devoted to reading and writing much like any other in her cozy Maine house. Now 77, Grumbach has opened her life to her readers in a series of memoirs, including Fifty Days of Solitude (1994), a practice that makes readers privy to the ornery soul of a writer as well as the keen and creative mind of a woman who has witnessed much splendor and folly, joy and sorrow. Grumbach moves from memories, some of her childhood, some of travels, to descriptions of the sunrise, the care she must take going down the stairs, and the all but ritualized procrastinations that keep her (like most writers) away from her desk. Grumbach's avoidance technique includes the perusing of books, especially those by Mark Twain whose witty misanthropy validates her own. This trait comes in handy when Grumbach receives a negative review of her new novel, an event that shades, then deepens this extraordinary rendering of an "ordinary" day. Donna Seaman
Book Description
In this elegant meditation on age and memory, Grumbach's grace, humor, and insight alert us to the transience of each day and the constant play between past and present. "[A] book that astonishes in its honesty. . . . What greater gift can a memoir bring than a self revealed in all its grubby particulars, with wit and, when day is done, acceptance?"-Rebecca Pepper Sinkler, The Washington Post Book Review
Life in a Day FROM THE PUBLISHER
In this elegant meditation on age and memory, Grumbach's grace, humor, and insight alert us to the transience of each day and the constant play between past and present. "[A] book that astonishes in its honesty. . . . What greater gift can a memoir bring than a self revealed in all its grubby particulars, with wit and, when day is done, acceptance?"-Rebecca Pepper Sinkler, The Washington Post Book Review
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
A day spent puttering about with a 77-year-old retiree living on the coast of Maine doesn't promise high adventure. Reality turns out quite differently. Grumbach has spent her adult life in the world of books and writers as a novelist and critic; her longtime companion is a rare book dealer. Every step she takes is an intellectual adventure, evoking memories of books she has read, writers she has known. The one defining event of this quiet day is a cruel one: a stingingly negative New York Times review of her novel The Book of Knowledge comes in the mail. Unflinchingly, Grumbach faces a verdict that begins: "This is rather a nasty book...." She even includes a facsimile of the review here so the reader may share her feelings. "Rejection," she realizes "is an affliction as painful as shingles or loss of a limb." Grumbach's struggles to sit at the computer and write will be agonizingly familiar to writers, in fact to all procrastinators. She begins to transcribe some handwritten notes but is distracted into searching for a quotation in Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up"that never-bettered book of sage counsel from an accomplished writer based on his own long, successful career." The quiet pace of her day, layered with side trips into a lifetime's storehouse of words and thoughts, is seductive. Despite occasional grumblings about technology and general modern aggravations, this is a profoundly optimistic book: a validation of the strength and the tranquillity to be found within the confines of the human mind. Illustrations. (Oct.)
Art & Photography
Book Info
