This is an auction for THE YEAR OF READING PROUST: A MEMOIR IN REAL TIME, by Phyllis Rose.

Amazon.com reviews:

"A brilliant and original memoir of midlife-a writing life, a reading life, a woman's life-by the distinguished author of Parallel Lives Phyllis Rose, a biographer, essayist, and literary critic, finally got around to reading Proust in middle age. As Rose learned, you don't have to live through an unhappy childhood or celebrity adulthood to write an autobiography. You just need patience, candour, and a close-to-scientific passion for truth. She begins to learn how to navigate the intricacies of Proust's novels, at the same time reflecting on the course of her own life. With striking honesty, Rose writes about marriage, friendship, childbirth, and her own mortality. As she moves from daily experience to what she's read and back again, she illuminates how the close reading of her own life reveals truths for the rest of us and how such a subtle celebration of books can help us live."

"FIVE STARS!!!! Phyllis Rose's sparkling memoir shows us how certain books come into our lives at certain times--almost as if the books find us, we don't find them. In her narrative, Proust is used as a conceit, allowing her to delve into memory while also telling us about her days, as ordinary, or at times, as extraordinary as they may be. At the end of the memoir, Rose comes to the realization that she is, when all is said and done, a diarist and woman of letters. It is this very strength that makes her book so enjoyable. Rose shows us how good readers make the fictions they read their own, and bring to bear on their own subjectivity lessons learned from the marvellous, difficult, and rewarding world of reading."

More very favourable reviews on Amazon.com.

Paperback 1998.

268 pages.

Very good condition.

The cost of shipping is $4.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Palmerston North following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.