The Year of Pleasures (30 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to my agent, Lisa Bankoff, and to my editor, Kate Medina, for their wisdom, kindness, and care. Thanks too to their assistants, Tina Dubois and Danielle Posen, for the many favors they do for me. My appreciation to my production editor, Beth Pearson, and to Margaret Wimberger, my copy editor for this book, who should be given a gold medal. And so should the art department, for once again creating such a stunning jacket. My writers group offered honest and valuable criticism; I am indebted to Veronica Chapa, Nancy Drew, Pam Todd, and Michele Weldon. My publicist, Kate Blum, is my lifeline when I’m on tour, and I am deeply appreciative of the myriad details she handles on my behalf.

Last, but certainly not least, thanks to Bill Young, my life partner, who shares it all with me and Homer and Cosette—and with Toblance, in spirit, always and forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E
LIZABETH
B
ERG
is the author of fourteen novels, including
The New York Times
bestsellers
The Art of Mending, Say When, True to Form, Never Change,
and
Open House,
which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000.
Durable Goods
and
Joy School
were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and
Talk Before Sleep
was short-listed for the ABBY award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her work, she is also the author of a nonfiction work,
Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True
. She lives in Chicago.

ALSO BY ELIZABETH BERG

The Art of Mending

Say When

True to Form

Ordinary Life: Stories

Never Change

Open House

Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True

Until the Real Thing Comes Along

What We Keep

Joy School

The Pull of the Moon

Range of Motion

Talk Before Sleep

Durable Goods

Family Traditions

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berg, Elizabeth.

The year of pleasures: a novel / Elizabeth Berg.

p. cm.

1. Widows—Fiction. 2. Middle West—Fiction. 3. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Female friendship—Fiction. 5. City and town life—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.E6996Y43 2005

813′.54—dc22 2004051471

Random House website address:
www.atrandom.com

eISBN: 978-1-58836-456-2

v3.0