{"product_id":"austen-years-paperback","title":"AUSTEN YEARS (Paperback)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eThe Globe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e's Best Books of 2020\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A thoroughly authentic, smart and consoling account of one writer’s commitment to another.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003e(editors' choice)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003en absolutely fascinating book\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e: I will never read Austen the same way again.\" \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Helen Macdonald, author of \u003ci\u003eH is for Hawk\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn astonishingly nuanced reading of Jane Austen that yields a rare understanding of how to live\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"About seven years ago, not too long before our daughter was born, and a year before my father died, Jane Austen became my only author.\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the turbulent period around the birth of her first child and the death of her father, Rachel Cohen turned to Jane Austen to make sense of her new reality. For Cohen, simultaneously grief-stricken and buoyed by the birth of her daughter, reading Austen became her refuge and her ballast. She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing, and imagining through Austen’s novels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAusten Years\u003c\/i\u003e is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of \u003ci\u003eAusten Years\u003c\/i\u003e widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen's novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter, a moment paired with the grief of \u003ci\u003eSense and Sensibility\u003c\/i\u003e and the social bonds of \u003ci\u003ePride and Prejudice\u003c\/i\u003e. Later, moving with her family to Chicago, Cohen grapples with her growing children, teaching, and her father’s legacy, all refracted through the denser, more complex \u003ci\u003eMansfield Park \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eEmma\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith unusual depth and fresh insight into Austen’s life and literature, and guided by Austen’s mournful and hopeful final novel, \u003ci\u003ePersuasion\u003c\/i\u003e, Rachel Cohen’s \u003ci\u003eAusten Years\u003c\/i\u003e is a rare memoir of mourning and transcendence, a love letter to a literary master, and a powerful consideration of the odd process that merges our interior experiences with the world at large.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cohen, Rachel","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52337254924562,"sku":"9781250798572","price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0270\/9238\/5846\/files\/8900653482633_8d4f9d55-0942-4c9b-b7a5-538390314865.jpg?v=1780438066","url":"https:\/\/hbswarehousesale.com\/products\/austen-years-paperback","provider":"Harvard Book Store Warehouse Sale","version":"1.0","type":"link"}