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Listening to Billie
“She commands her material so well that we are made to believe that her fiction—her plot—is no stranger than our lives.” --Ms. Magazine
Listening to Billie is a brilliant portrait of a contemporary woman adventurously, decisively embarked on her own life.
We first glimpse Eliza Hamilton Quarles as a blonde boarding-school student, sitting in a sophisticated New York club, listening to Billie Holiday. She is on the brink of her marriage to her older, worldly date. Twenty years later, a mother, divorced, she, tentatively begins a new life, with new lovers, new interests, new strength, even a new, more comfortable identity.
Listening to Billie is a brilliant portrait of a contemporary woman adventurously, decisively embarked on her own life.
We first glimpse Eliza Hamilton Quarles as a blonde boarding-school student, sitting in a sophisticated New York club, listening to Billie Holiday. She is on the brink of her marriage to her older, worldly date. Twenty years later, a mother, divorced, she, tentatively begins a new life, with new lovers, new interests, new strength, even a new, more comfortable identity.
- GenresFiction
226 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 8, 2011
About the author
Alice Adams
66 books50 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Alice Adams was an American novelist, short story writer, academic and university professor.
She was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia and attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1946. She married, and had a child, but her marriage broke up, and she spent several years as a single mother, working as a secretary. Her psychiatrist told her to give up writing and get remarried; instead she published her first novel, Careless Love (1966), and a few years later she published her first short story in The New Yorker. She wrote many novels but she's best known for her short stories, in collections such as After You've Gone (1989) and The Last Lovely City (1999).
She won numerous awards including the O. Henry Award, and Best American Short Stories Award.
Alice Adams was an American novelist, short story writer, academic and university professor.
She was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia and attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1946. She married, and had a child, but her marriage broke up, and she spent several years as a single mother, working as a secretary. Her psychiatrist told her to give up writing and get remarried; instead she published her first novel, Careless Love (1966), and a few years later she published her first short story in The New Yorker. She wrote many novels but she's best known for her short stories, in collections such as After You've Gone (1989) and The Last Lovely City (1999).
She won numerous awards including the O. Henry Award, and Best American Short Stories Award.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 13, 2015
The novel deals in a quiet, understated way with the complicated relationships between two sisters, their mother, a daughter, some husbands and lovers, and with the attempts of various characters to make sense out of their aimless lives. I was intrigued but ultimately unsatisfied with this novel. First published in 1975, it is in some ways a period piece illustrating the aftermath of the sixties, with characters who remain fairly uninvolved in the lives of the people who could matter most to them.
December 15, 2016
Another of my single women behaving strangely. There's a loveliness to the sensibility though.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews