LISTENING TO BILLIE

A Novel

“She commands her material so well that we are made to believe that her fiction—her plot—is no stranger than our lives.”  --Ms. Magazine
 
Listening to Billie is a brilliant portrait of a contemporary woman adventurously, decisively embarked on her own life.
 
We first glimpse Eliza Hamilton Quarles as a blonde boarding-school student, sitting in a sophisticated New York club, listening to Billie Holiday. She is on the brink of her marriage to her older, worldly date. Twenty years later, a mother, divorced, she, tentatively begins a new life, with new lovers, new interests, new strength, even a new, more comfortable identity.

© Sydney Goldstein
ALICE ADAMS was born in Virginia and raised in North Carolina, and graduated from Radcliffe College. The recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, she received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was the author of five collections of short stories and ten novels, among them Listening to Billie, Superior Women, Second Chances, and A Southern Exposure. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999. View titles by Alice Adams

About

“She commands her material so well that we are made to believe that her fiction—her plot—is no stranger than our lives.”  --Ms. Magazine
 
Listening to Billie is a brilliant portrait of a contemporary woman adventurously, decisively embarked on her own life.
 
We first glimpse Eliza Hamilton Quarles as a blonde boarding-school student, sitting in a sophisticated New York club, listening to Billie Holiday. She is on the brink of her marriage to her older, worldly date. Twenty years later, a mother, divorced, she, tentatively begins a new life, with new lovers, new interests, new strength, even a new, more comfortable identity.

Author

© Sydney Goldstein
ALICE ADAMS was born in Virginia and raised in North Carolina, and graduated from Radcliffe College. The recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, she received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was the author of five collections of short stories and ten novels, among them Listening to Billie, Superior Women, Second Chances, and A Southern Exposure. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999. View titles by Alice Adams