The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time

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, candor, 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.

Phyllis Rose is the author of Parallel Lives and Jazz Cleopatra, among other books, and the editor of The Norton Book of Women's Lives. She lives in New York City and Key West.