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A New York Times Notable Book: To truly understand herself, Doris Grumbach embraces solitude With a busy career as a novelist, essayist, reviewer, and bookstore owner, Doris Grumbach has little opportunity to be alone. However, after seventy-five years on the planet, she finally has her chance: Her partner has departed for an extended book-buying trip, and Grumbach has been given fifty days to relax, think, and write about her experience. In this graceful memoir, Grumbach delicately balances the beauty of turning one's back on everything with the hardship of complete aloneness. Even as she attends church and collects her mail, she moves like a shadow, speaking to no one. Left only to her books and music in the midst of a Maine winter, she must look within herself for solace. The result of this reflection is a powerful meditation on the meaning of aging, writing, and one's own company—and reaffirmation of the power of friends and companionship.

A New York Times Notable Book: A moving glimpse of a life shrewdly examinedExtra Innings follows a year in the life of Doris Grumbach, beginning with the release of her previous memoir and journal, Coming into the End Zone, and revealing that the devoted essayist, novelist, and critic possesses as keen an eye in her seventies as she did when she wrote The Spoil of Flowers thirty years earlier. Grumbach details each passing month and the trials and tribulations therein. Age and experience have tempered her anger, allowing her to view the world in a rosier light than she has before. In this eventful period that concludes with her move from Washington, DC, to Maine, Grumbach travels between signings and speeches, describes her home life in a new state, and deals not only with her own mortality, but with that of her daughter. Grumbach's wisdom and wit endure as she looks back on her own memories, seeing the world as only Doris Grumbach can.

A literary master looks ahead to her eighties As her eightieth birthday approaches, Doris Grumbach does not feel melancholy or saddened by the upcoming event, despite the loss of friends such as Kay Boyle and Dorothy Day—instead she takes it as an opportunity both to look backward and to grow. In this, her summer of unexpected content, Grumbach weaves the elegiac and the practical into a delightful tapestry of experience. She looks deep into her own history, telling stories of her life in the hardscrabble New York of the 1940s, working as a copyeditor. She details her near encounter with a seventy-two-year-old Bertrand Russell, calling it the closest she has ever come to sleeping with a Nobel Laureate. Grumbach lets us into her life and introduces us to the characters that have peopled her nearly eight decades on Earth. As the fateful day of her celebration draws near, the main topic on Doris Grumbach's mind is not herself; it's her guests. The Pleasure of Their Company is a meticulously planned party that any reader would be honored to attend.

'Astonishes in its honesty.... What greater gift can a memoir bring than a self revealed in all its grubby particulars?'-Rebecca Pepper Sinkler, The Washington Post Book World'A diary of a day that encapsulates the memories, reflections, and yearnings of a lifetime as gracefully as a Fabergé egg captures spring sunlight in its tiny interior.'-Kirkus Reviews'For Grumbach, living is an adventure on the magic carpet ride of memory, reverie, and imagination. Life in a Day affirms the ripples of meaning which can emanate out of simple rituals, happenings, and activities.'-Frederic A. Brussat, Body Mind Spirit'[Life in a Day] illuminates the way memory has woven itself into the fabric of a rich life.... To spend a day with [Grumbach] is rewarding.'-Patricia Roth Schwartz, Lambda Book Report'[A] wise and lovely little book.'-Barbara Holliday, Detroit Free Press'This is a profoundly optimistic book: a validation of the strength and the tranquility to be found within the confines of the human mind.'-Publishers Weekly, starred review