Evenings at Five by Gail Godwin

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Gail Godwin
• Title: Evenings at Five
• Publisher: ‎ Ballantine Books; First Edition (April 1, 2003)
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover – 114 pages‏
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0345461029
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0345461025
• Item Weight: ‎ .50 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 5.5 x 0.6 x 7.5 inches
• Book Condition: New / Like New – Excellent
• Dust Jacket Condition: Excellent
• Edition: First Edition

 

Synopsis:

Every evening at five o’clock, Christina and Rudy stopped work and began the ritual commonly known as Happy Hour. Rudy mixed Christina’s drink with loving precision, the cavalier slosh of Bombay Sapphire over ice shards, before settling across from her in his Stickley chair with his glass of Scotch. They shared a love of language and music (she is an author, he a composer, after all), a delight in intense conversation, a fascination with popes, and nearly thirty years of life together.

 

What did I think, that we had forever? muses Christina, seven months after Rudy’s unexpected death. While coming to terms with her loss, with the space that Rudy once inhabited, Christina reflects on their vibrant bond—with all its quirks, habits, and unguarded moments—as well as her passionate sorrow and her attempts to reposition herself and her new place in the very real world they shared.

 

In this literary jewel, a bittersweet novella of absence and presence and the mysterious gap between them, Gail Godwin has performed a small miracle. In essence, Evenings at Five is a grief sonata for solo instrument transposed into words. Interwoven with meditations and movements, full of aching truths and a wicked sense of humor, it exquisitely captures the cyclical nature of commitment—and the eternal quality of a romance completed.

 

About the Author:

Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including Unfinished Desires, A Mother and Two Daughters, Violet Clay, Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband, and Evenings at Five.

 

She is also the author of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961–1963, the first of two volumes, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

 

She has written libretti for ten musical works with the composer Robert Starer.

 

She lives in Woodstock, New York.