This image is the cover for the book Love and Friendship

Love and Friendship

In the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “excellent” debut, a professor’s wife searches for liberation at the hands of a music instructor (The New York Times).

Though born in New York, the men of Emmy Turner’s family have long found their spiritual home in the idyllic Convers College. Her father, brothers, and uncles entered the New England intellectual enclave as boys and came out men, ready to take on the challenges of the world. It is a pity, Emmy thinks, that women are not allowed to enroll. So when her husband, Holman, wins a place teaching at Convers, Emmy is thrilled to finally see what all the fuss is about. But by the time the first snow hits, she is bored, listless, and utterly out of love.

Emmy’s search for pleasure on campus leads her to Miranda, a cocky young bohemian, and Will, a music teacher specializing in sexual composition. Emmy may not be paying tuition, but in her first Convers winter she will learn more than she ever expected.

The National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs Affairs, The War Between the Tates, and The Last Resort writes a sharply observant and poignant debut novel.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

Alison Lurie

Alison Lurie (1926–2020) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author of fiction and nonfiction. Born in Chicago and raised in White Plains, New York, she joined the English department at Cornell University in 1970, where she taught courses on children’s literature, among others. Her first novel, Love and Friendship (1962), is a story of romance and deception among the faculty of a snowbound New England college. It won favorable reviews and established her as a keen observer of love in academia. It was followed by the well-received The Nowhere City (1966) and The War Between the Tates (1974). In 1984, she published Foreign Affairs, her best-known novel, which traces the erotic entanglements of two American professors in England. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985. Her most recent novel is The Last Resort (1998). In addition to her novels, Lurie’s interest in children’s literature led to three collections of folk tales and two critical studies of the genre. Lurie officially retired from Cornell in 1998, but continued to teach and write in the years following. In 2012, she was awarded a two-year term as the official author of the state of New York.