Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Diane Meier’s debut novel,
The Season of Second Chances (Henry Holt and Company), is about Joy Harkness, a 48-year-old tenured professor of literature at Columbia University, who is gifted as a teacher and scholar but hapless and hopeless in her personal life. New York City has not been kind or generous to her, and when she gets a too-good-to-be-true offer from Amherst College, Joy gets what many middle-aged people secretly hope for: a do-over. She impulsively buys a rundown Victorian house, discovers the pleasures of renovation and decoration, makes friends unlike any she’s had before, and, well . . . let’s just say this is a feel-good book. If the plot sounds romantic, optimistic, and cinematic (you can imagine Laura Linney playing Joy in the movie), the book is also sharp and smart as a book about a gifted scholar must be to be credible.
Read the entire interview.
Rural Intelligence
