"Buoyant. . . . The reader doesn't want this party to be over."
-Leslie Chess Feller, The New York Times Book Review

Using the occasion of her eightieth-birthday party to reflect on the past, Doris Grumbach delivers an enchanting memoir of the writers, friends, and loves who have accompanied her in mind and body through an extraordinary life of letters.

"Triumphant. . . . [Grumbach] is tireless in her passion for ideas."
-Steven Harvey, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"[Grumbach] lives simultaneously in the past with departed friends, in the present with daily chores, in her imagination with well-known and remembered books, and she is completely alive in each sphere."
-Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe

"Grumbach writes effortlessly and beautifully. She has led a life passionately devoted to books and writing, and as she approaches 80 the passion is still there."
-David Guy, Washington Post Book World

Doris Grumbach, author of many books including Fifty Days of Solitude, Life in a Day, and The Presence of Absence, has been literary editor of The New Republic, a nonfiction columnist for The New York Times Book Review, and a book reviewer for National Public Radio. She lives in Maine.