The Life Room
About this audiobook
Eleanor Cahn is a professor of literature, the wife of a preeminent cardiac surgeon, and a devoted mother. But on a trip to Paris to present a paper on Anna Karenina, Eleanor re-connects with Stephen—a childhood friend with whom she has had a complicated relationship—that forces her to realize that she has suppressed her passionate self for years. As the novel unfolds, we learn of her hidden erotic past: with alluring, elusive Stephen; with ethereal William, her high school boyfriend; with married, egotistical Adam, the painter who initiated her into the intimacies of the “life room,” where the artist’s model sometimes becomes muse; and with loyal, steady Michael, her husband. On her return to New York, Eleanor and Stephen’s charged attraction takes on a life of its own and threatens to destroy everything she has.
Jill Bialosky has created a fresh, piercingly real heroine who struggles with the spiritual questions and dilemmas of our time and, like Tolstoy’s immortal Anna Karenina, must choose between desire and responsibility.
About the author
Jill Bialosky is the author of Asylum and four other critically acclaimed collections of poetry; The Deceptions and three other critically acclaimed novels; and two memoirs, including History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life, a New York Times bestseller. Her work has been a finalist for the James Laughlin Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Books for a Better Life Award. In 2014, she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry. She is executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company. She lives in New York City. Find out more at JillBialosky.com.
Cassandra Campbell has recorded nearly two hundred audiobooks and directed many more. She has been nominated for and won multiple Audie Awards, as well as the prestigious Odyssey Award. She has received numerous starred audio reviews in both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal and more than twenty AudioFile Earphones Awards. Cassandra was also named a Best Voice by AudioFile for 2009 and 2010.
