Author Event: Susan Conley and Lily King at Northshire Books (+ Giveaway)

As I mentioned in my Mailbox Monday post yesterday, my friend Rowena and I were in Manchester, Vermont, last week where we visited the Northshire Bookstore, one of America’s leading independent bookstores.

We were lucky enough to be there for what turned out to be a fabulous author event: a joint reading by memoirist Susan Conley, who was touring her first book, The Foremost Good Fortune, and novelist Lily King, who was touring her third novel, Father of the Rain. As it turns out, the writers have been friends for 15 years and corresponded by email while they were writing these books (while Susan lived in China and Lily lived in Italy). They read us excerpts from their emails to each other, which had me alternately in stitches and in tears (mostly the former!)—I really hope they someday publish a book of their correspondence. They then read to us from their books: The Foremost Good Fortune is Susan’s memoir about living in China and surviving breast cancer, while Father of the Rain is a novel about a daughter’s relationship with her alcoholic father.

Susan Conley, me and Lily King

Getting a glimpse into their writing processes and then listening to excerpts from the final products was so inspiring! (I’m also fascinated by relationships between women writers.) I bought four books in the end, three for me and one for one of you (and had them all autographed, of course). These are the three for me (including Lily’s first novel, The Pleasing Hour):

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Would you like to win an autographed copy of The Pleasing Hour, Lily King’s first novel? The giveaway is open internationally. I will accept entries until 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Monday,
June 6.

Here’s the blurb from the back cover of the book:

The first novel from a new literary voice brimming with sensitivity and lyricism, The Pleasing Hour is the story of an American in Europe whose coming-of-age defies all our usual conceptions of naiveté and experience. Fleeing a devastating loss, Rosie takes a job as an au pair with a Parisian family and soon find the comfort and intimacy she longs for with their children and the father, Marc. Only Nicole, the children’s distant, impeccably polished mother, is unwilling to embrace the young American. But when Rosie realizes that her attachments have become transgressions, she leaves for the south of France. There she learns about Nicole’s own haunted past and the losses that link the two women more closely than either could have imagined.

If you are a follower or subscriber, let me know and I will give you an extra entry.

Make sure you provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries without a blog link or email address will be disqualified.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
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This giveaway is part of the Armchair BEA event. Visit the Giveaways Galore post to enter other Armchair BEA giveaways.