The Odd Woman and the City

By Vivian Gornick,

Book cover of The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir

Book description

A contentious, deeply moving ode to friendship, love, and urban life in the spirit of Fierce Attachments

A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Odd Woman and the City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

As much about ideas and the nature of friendship as it is about the city, this slim volume captures, better than any other I know, the visceral feel of living in New York. Fiercely independent, Gornick wanders the city’s streets in the “habit of loneliness,” ever watching, listening, and thinking. A child of working-class Jewish immigrants, she grew up in the Bronx in the 1940s and 1950s, and writes in a funny, smart, rueful, and tell-it-like-it-is voice that is unmistakably New York. 

From Christiane's list on New York City by women writers.

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The Pianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.

Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist…

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