On April 2, at 5:30 p.m. novelist Nicholas Delbanco will read from his new novel The Years at the Lilly Library on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington. The event is sponsored by the Friends of the Lilly Library, with additional support from the College Arts and Humanities Institute. A reception will follow the event. Called by John Gardener “one of our greatest writers,” Nicholas Delbanco has published over two dozen acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction.
His latest novel, The Years, published by Little A in January 2015, deals with the passage of time, from youth to middle age, from middle age to old. Four decades after their intense but doomed college romance, the novel’s protagonists, Lawrence and Hermia, meet again on Mediterranean cruise, falling more deeply in love now, and wondering whether or not to marry in their sixties. Moving across many years, the first part of the novel reports on their prior, separate lives and the steps toward a new life together. When Lawrence comes to visit Hermia’s home on Cape Cod she has one request: “Please stay.” What happens when he does fills the rest of this heartfelt, unforgettable novel. With enormous sympathy and keen insight, Delbanco follows Hermia and Lawrence through their final years together in Los Angeles and Cape Cod. Old scores are settled; old wounds heal. The Years is a unique book about first and final love, about the irrevocable end of things, and about what endures.
The Friends of Art Bookshop will offer copies of the novel for sale at the reading, and Mr. Delbanco has agreed to sign them.
About the Author:
Nicholas Delbanco is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. His most recent book was The Art of Youth: Crane, Carrington, Gershwin, and the Nature of First Acts (Amazon Publishing/New Harvest), selected by Susan Stamberg for NPR’s Guide to 2013’s Great Reads. The long-term director of the MFA program as well as the Hopwood Awards Program at the University of Michigan, he has served as chair of the fiction panel for the National Book Awards and a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, twice, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship.
The Years is available for sale at the Friends of Art Bookshop.
Questions? Contact The Lilly Library at (812) 855-2452.