2012, ISBN: 9780062049810

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Atlantic Monthly Pr, Sep-99. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Nice book! First Edition, 1999. Mild shelf wear on dustjacket, lightly aged pages, no markings. Amazon: The act of wr… Plus…

Atlantic Monthly Pr, Sep-99. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Nice book! First Edition, 1999. Mild shelf wear on dustjacket, lightly aged pages, no markings. Amazon: The act of writing a first novel has a lot in common with being an au pair. Each is often accomplished by a young, overeducated woman who believes she is the center of the universe. This can make for dull reading, and sometimes for unattended children falling down staircases. But Lily King's fine first novel--about an au pair--neatly avoids the solipsism that often plagues coming-of-age stories. In The Pleasing Hour, 19-year-old Rosie has fled New Hampshire for France after undergoing an anguishing loss: she surrendered her newborn son to her infertile, married sister. Rosie is literally hollowed out, unable to see beyond her own pain. """"Nothing in my body felt right. It seemed to be ringing with pain but there was no part of me that I could point to and tell her, Here, here's where it hurts. """"In Paris she moves in with the Tivots: the unassuming, shambling father, Marc; the glamorous and unforgiving mother, Nicole; the beautiful daughter, Odile; the merry daughter, Lola; the momma's boy, Guillaume. Rosie steps into the highly polarized atmosphere of the Tivot household, unconsciously upsetting its equilibrium by throwing in her lot with Marc and Lola. And when the family heads off to Spain for vacation, the power balance shifts palpably, since Rosie is the only one who speaks Spanish. Even Nicole grudgingly admires her. What's more, Rosie notices Marc regarding her with the """"""""relentless curiosity he'd had in his eye since we landed in Spain."""""""" On Mallorca, the two consummate their relationship, and the betrayal forces her to see beyond her own worries to the entrenched pains and allegiances of her host family. King cleverly iterates this message in her narrative. She occasionally, deliberately, allows each member of the Tivot family to voice the story, and this opening-up of the narrative allows the world to flow into a novel whose themes might otherwise seem petty. In the end, the author doesn't perpetrate the dull crime of youthful self-involvement--she comments on it. We care for Rosie from the start, but we like her a lot more as she comes alive to the people around her. --Claire Dederer."""" """"From Publishers Weekly: A year in France brings a young American new reserves of sympathy and maturity in this poised, accomplished first novel. Nineteen-year-old Rosie, King's sensitive narrator, arrives in Paris on the first day of the school year, set for her job as the Tivot family's au pair. The other au pairs (in French usage, filles) are cosmopolitan students drawn to French culture. Rosie, however, has come here to flee her past: she became pregnant as a deliberate act of charity, giving up her baby so her infertile sister could have a child. But that decision has only heightened her omnipresent sense of loss. Her months with the Tivot family on their houseboat bring her new and difficult human connections: to the inquisitive, needy 12-year-old Lola and her younger brother, Guillaume; to their unhappy, astringent mother, Nicole; and to their father, Marc, with whom the reserved Rosie gradually falls in love. After Lola catches Rosie and Marc holding hands on a family trip to Spain, Rosie is sent to a small town in Provence to care for Nicole's Aunt Lucie, in her 90s. In chapters interspersed with Rosie's own story, Aunt Lucie fills in the background of Nicole's family, a grim account of inheritance and treachery during WWII. Expertly constructed, full of surprises, superbly paced and sweetly sad, King's book hardly reads like a first novel; her skilled observation and careful narrative voice prevent the wartime plot from seeming sensational, and keeps Rosie's saga of melodrama. In fact, the seamless integration of theme, plot and voice produces a rare sense of intimacy. Rosie's final discoveries about France, about families and about herself through Lucie, Lola and Nicole take her on an inward journey readers will feel privileged to share. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc."""", Atlantic Monthly Pr, 3, This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom Booklist calls "Anne Lamott's hip, yoga- practicing, footloose younger sister") is poised to garner yet more adoring fans., Penguin (Non-Classics), 5, Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount is universally renowned! This is a classic 187-page volume by a known Bible scholar. The DJ flyleaf reads: "Preached without a pulpit, to a handful of humble men, the greatest sermon ever preached has touched the hearts of spiritually hungry people through the many centuries since it was first delivered. Charles L. Allen uses his unique talent for illustrating difficult passages to inspire these meditations to bring new insight for the modern application of Jesus' words."Very Good+!Very well-preserved. All pages are intact; 20 pages out of the 187 have light marks/underlining. NOhighlighting. NOT ex-Library. There is NO name but there is a nameplate. Undamaged spine with a tight binding and strong hinges; no creases. Very Good+ beautiful blue covers with gilt lettering on spine, NO rips, tears, or corner bumps. FIRST EDITION! Very Good dust cover/jacket, professionally covered with library grade Mylar. (The shine/reflection in the photo is due to the Mylar covering.) The pictures depict the actual book you will receive. Generally, ships on the same business day! Ships with Tracking Number! Countries other than the USA will require an additional shipping cost., Fleming H. Revell Company, 1966, 3, Boston: Little, Brown/Atlantic Monthly Press, 1950 1st ed. 276pp. illus. red cloth 8vo w/gilt pheasant decoration: Good+ in a worn dj [some age darkening of edges & endpp; else a clean, complete & tight copy] A novel about a beautiful game bird trying to survive during the difficult years 1937-44, by the prolific English natural history writer Williamson (1895-1977), most famous for his 1928 Hawthornden Prize winning novel, "Tarka the Otter.", Boston: Little, Brown/Atlantic Monthly Press, 2.5, In a memoir that pierces and delights us, Jill Ker Conway tells the story of her astonishing journey into adulthooda journey that would ultimately span immense distances and encompass worlds, ideas, and ways of life that seem a century apart.She was seven before she ever saw another girl child. At eight, still too small to mount her horse unaided, she was galloping miles, alone, across Coorain, her parents' thirty thousand windswept, drought-haunted acres in the Australian outback, doing a "man's job" of helping herd the sheep because World War II had taken away the able-bodied men. She loved (and makes us see and feel) the vast unpeopled landscape, beautiful and hostile, whose uncertain weathers tormented the sheep ranchers with conflicting promises of riches and inescapable disaster. She adored (and makes us know) her large-visioned father and her strong, radiant mother, who had gone willingly with him into a pioneering life of loneliness and bone-breaking toil, who seemed miraculously to succeed in creating a warmly sheltering home in the harsh outback, and who, upon her husband's sudden death when Jill was ten, began to slidebereft of the partnership of work and love that had so utterly fulfilled herinto depression and dependency.We see Jill, staggered by the loss of her father, catapulted to what seemed another planetthe suburban Sydney of the 1950s and its crowded, noisy, cliquish school life. Then the heady excitement of the University, but with it a yet more demanding course of lessonsJill embracing new ideas, new possibilities, while at the same time trying to be mother to her mother and resenting it, escaping into drink, pulling herself back, striking a balance. We see her slowly gaining strength, coming into her own emotionally and intellectually and beginning the joyous love affair that gave wings to her newfound self.Worlds away from Coorain, in America, Jill Conway became a historian and the first woman president of Smith College. Her story of Coorain and the road from Coorain startles by its passion and evocative power, by its understanding of the ways in which a total, deep-rooted commitment to placeor to a dreamcan at once liberate and imprison. It is a story of childhood as both Eden and anguish, and of growing up as a journey toward the difficult life of the free., Vintage; First Vintage Books edition, 0, AMACOM, 2008. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Good. The dust jacket is a little shelf rubbed and minor marks. The boards are in good condition. Internally, there are no markings or inscriptions, and the pages are immaculately clean and complete. Tightly bound and presented beautifully in cellophane. The binding is excellent. GK. Our orders are shipped using tracked courier delivery services., AMACOM, 2008, 2.75, Expect miracles when you read Ann Patchett's fiction."New York Times Book ReviewAward-winning, New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett returns with a provocative and assured novel of morality and miracles, science and sacrifice set in the Amazon rainforest. Infusing the narrative with the same ingenuity and emotional urgency that pervaded her acclaimed previous novels Bel Canto, Taft, Run, The Magician's Assistant, and The Patron Saint of Liars, Patchett delivers an enthrallingly innovative tale of aspiration, exploration, and attachment in State of Wondera gripping adventure story and a profound look at the difficult choices we make in the name of discovery and love.Review"An engaging, consummately told tale." ( New York Times)"Emotionally lucid. . . . Patchett is at her lyrical best when she catalogues the jungle." ( The New Yorker)"This is surely the smartest, most exciting novel of the summer." ( Washington Post)"The Amazon setting is something Patchett does rather marvelously. The book is serious, but also so pleasurable that you hope it won't end." (NPR)"Outlandishly entertaining[with] a brilliantly constructed plot." (Elle)"Packs a textbook's worth of ethical conundrums into a smart and tidily delivered story. . . . Ms. Patchett presents an alluring interplay between civilization and wilderness, between aid and exploitation." ( Wall Street Journal)"The large canvas of sweeping moral issues, both personal and global, comes to life through careful attention to details, however seemingly mundanefrom ill-fitting shoes and mosquito bites to a woman tenderly braiding another woman's hair." (O, the Oprah Magazine)"A spellbinder from bestselling author Patchett. . . . Thrilling, disturbing and moving in equal measureseven better than Patchett's breakthrough Bel Canto." ( Kirkus Reviews (starred review))"A superbly rendered novel. . . . Patchett's portrayal is as wonderful as it is frightening and foreign. Patchett exhibits an extraordinary ability to bring the horrors and the wonders of the Amazon jungle to life, and her singular characters are wonderfully drawn. . . . Powerful and captivating." ( Library Journal (starred review))"A thrilling new novel. . . . The world imagined in this novel is unusually vivid. . . . Reading State of Wonder is a sensory experience, and even after it's over you'll keep hearing the sounds of insects, and your own head will still be hot." (No Source)From the Back CoverIn a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, scientific miracles, and spiritual transformations, State of Wonder presents a world of stunning surprise and danger, rich in emotional resonance and moral complexity.As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into the insect-infested Amazon, she will be forced to surrender herself to the lush but forbidding world that awaits within the jungle. Charged with finding her former mentor Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness. Stirring and luminous, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss beneath the rain forest's jeweled canopy.ANN PATCHETT is the author of seven novels, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician's Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder, and Commonwealth. She was the editor of Best American Short Stories, 2006, and has written three books of nonfiction, Truth & Beauty, about her friendship with the writer, Lucy Grealy, What now? an expansion of her graduation address at Sarah Lawrence College, and, most recently, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of essays., Harper Perennial; 1st edition (May 1, 2012), 0<