That first chapter really captivated me – the writing was good and I loved the description of the teacher and her teaching style. I had high hopes for this book! Unfortunately, it could not sustain my interest after that.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get into this. I think that it might need to be read as a paperback, instead of an ebook.

I received this free ebook from Net Galley in return for an honest review.

I struggle to finish this book, because the writing style felt unfocused, and it just seemed to take a long time to get to a point. This made it feel rambling, and it felt like it took forever to read. Some cutting might have made it more relatable.

Thank you for the chance to review this book, however, unfortunately, I was unable to read and review this title before it was archived.

She Read to Us in the Late Afternoons
A Life in Novels
by Hill, Kathleen
Open Road Integrated Media
Biographies & Memoirs
I am reviewing a copy of She Read to Us In Late Afternoons through Open Road Integrated Media and Netgalley:
Books have a way of shiping is, in a way defining who we become. Kathleen Hill highlights the books she read while in Nigeria and France as well as at her home in New York talking about the impact each book had on her life at the various points in her life.
Books like Things Fall Apart, Beyond the Fringe, Goodbye to All That, The Palm Wine Drinkard, Out of Africa, The Heart Of the Matter, The African Child and A Passage To India were read on late afternoons as the season of rain was coming to an end.
She read Madame Bovary while in France alone taking care of her crying children, she would sneak moments of reading in.
On a drizzly Saturday afternoon one December Kathleen Hill picked up The Diary of A Country Priest and began reading.
Hill talks about getting lost in the pages of A Portrait Of A Lady, growing to understand the main character more and more as she spent longer periods of time lost in its pages
Kathleen read to herself and to a friend whose eyesight had been deteriorating for years, she read to her children.
Hill Read in memory of those she lost, friends and loved one, she read for entertainment, but deeper than that she read for understanding.

She Read to Us In Late Afternoons reminds us of the power of books, the impact of the written word on our lives. It reminds us that the books we read have an impact on us.
I give She Read to Us in Late Afternoons five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!

Kathleen Hill's memoir, She Read to Us in the Late Afternoons: A Life in Novels, was an interesting read, but she stretches her theme to breaking in places.

On the one hand, it's a memoir of her early years (childhood, early marriage, teaching in Nigeria and France with her new husband). But then she jumps ahead 30 years for another interlude in her life. In this scenario, the last chapter seems out of place. She tries to tie it in to the earlier chapters, but it didn't really work well. I would have almost preferred a book on it's own about her relationship with Diana Trilling and the years she spent going over and reading Proust to the older woman as Diana went blind. It felt like there was a lot more material to be uncovered there.

Then there's the fact that each chapter is built around (and named after) a novel she was reading at the time, and how she looked at her life through the lens of the book. But based on that, the first chapter set in Nigeria really had to labour to make that connection. This is also the only chapter based on a black (and African) writer. Where every other chapter goes into enough detail about the book it is centered on that I don't think I need to read the book in question at all, the chapter 'Things Fall Apart' (by Chinua Achebe) spends at most two paragraphs on the book, and then just details thing that happened to her. Sure, there's elements like her visiting a museum about slavery, or her students reacting to the assassination of JFK, but the other chapters included long passages of decribing plot elements in the book she was reading, and how she interpreted that into her own life. It felt rather like she had used this book because she felt guilty about not including an African writer when she spent so long on her early married life in Nigeria.

So, while I enjoyed the reading, it did feel like two loosely connected books were put together because neither was quite long enough on their own.

I do not understand why this book has been commissioned or written. Some things are better in a blog than a book and there is definitely no book here.

She Read to us in The Late Afternooms by Kathleen Hill is a memoir written in books. Each chapter is under the title of a book and then broken down into parts on how each book came into the authors life and how it had an impact on her life and related to what was happening. I think that this is a good book for people who like memoirs. At first I couldn't really get into this book but, once I read further I enjoyed it.

Thank you Netgalley and Open Road Media for my review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

I couldn't get into this book at all. It began ok, but then I quickly lost interest.