This image is the cover for the book Starting Out in the Evening

Starting Out in the Evening

A New York Times Notable Book: A friendship evolves between an aging author and a young grad student in a novel by the acclaimed author of Florence Gordon.

A PEN/Faulkner Award Nominee and one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year

Leonard Schiller is a novelist in his seventies, a second-string but respectable talent who produced only a small handful of books. Heather Wolfe is an attractive graduate student in her twenties. She read Schiller’s novels when she was growing up and they changed her life. When the ambitious Heather decides to write her master’s thesis about Schiller’s work and sets out to meet him—convinced she can bring Schiller back into the literary world’s spotlight—the unexpected consequences of their meeting alter everything in Schiller’s ordered life. What follows is a quasi-romantic friendship and intellectual engagement that investigates the meaning of art, fame, and personal connection. “Nothing less than a triumph,” Starting Out in the Evening is Brian Morton’s most widely acclaimed novel to date (The New York Times Book Review).

Brian Morton

Brian Morton is the author of four previous novels, including Starting Out in the Evening, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was made into an acclaimed feature film, and A Window Across the River, which was a Book Club selection of the Today show. He teaches at New York University, the Bennington Writing Seminars, and Sarah Lawrence College, where he also directs the writing program. Morton lives in New York.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (www.hmhco.com)