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Ballantine
June 2007
On Sale: May 22, 2007
272 pages
ISBN: 0345485866
EAN: 9780345485861
Hardcover
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Fiction
Can reading change your life? Following her acclaimed novel The Doctorβs Daughter, award-winning author Hilma Wolitzer has now written a stirring tale about friendship, romance, inspiration, longing, and, especially, the love of good books. Summer Reading offers a seductive glimpse into the intersecting lives of three very different women. Summer in the Hamptons means crowded beaches during the day and lavish parties in the evening, but Angela Graves, a retired English professor, prefers the company of Gabriel GarcΓa MΓ‘rquez and Charlotte BrontΓ«. Her only steady social contacts are with the women in the reading groups she leads, among them, is wealthy Lissy Snyder, a beautiful newlywed who hosts the twice-monthly meetings of the Page Turners and takes pains to hide a reading disability and her emotional neediness. Hamptons local Michelle Cutty, Lissyβs housecleaner, eavesdrops on the groupβs discussionsβof books and gossipβwhen sheβs not snooping through Lissyβs closets. All three women secretly struggle with troubling personal issues that threaten the tenuous balance of their lives: Lissy, abandoned by her father in childhood, is now the unwilling stepmother of her husbandβs hostile children; Michelle, resentful of the moneyed arrogance of the jet-setting, seasonal βinvaders,β canβt secure a commitment from her fisherman boyfriend; and solitary, bookish Angela still bears the shameful memory of a disastrous love affair that took place long ago. As Angela encourages the Page Turners to identify with the literary heroines of Trollope and Flaubert, the booksβin fact, the act of reading itselfβwill influence the tough choices the women must make. Stunningly evocative and richly imagined, Summer Reading explores the meaning and consequences of living an authentic life.
 Media BuzzFresh Air - NPR - June 18, 2007
Diane Rehm Show - NPR - May 24, 2007
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