Life in a day

With quiet eloquence, Grumbach leads the reader from a predawn meditation on the Book of Common Prayer through the next eighteen hours of one day in her seventy-seven years. Her fierce and reductive eye transforms a single pot of oxalis into a whole garden. Memories of travels and connections with other people expand the confines of her home to an infinite space. The view of the cove from her kitchen window seems to encompass all the world.

As we follow her through a day's activities and exercises in procrastination, Grumbach's grace, humor, and insight alert us to the transience of each day and the constant play between past and present. With charming illustrations that include a Duchamp painting, postcards from past excursions, and fragments torn from newspapers, Life in a Day is an elegant meditation on age and memory. It will delight any reader for whom the life of the mind holds endless possibilities.