One of The Globe and Mail 's Best Books of 2020 "A thoroughly authentic, smart and consoling account of one writer’s commitment to another." -- The New York Times Book Review (editors' choice) "A n absolutely fascinating book : I will never read Austen the same way again." ―Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk An astonishingly nuanced reading of Jane Austen that yields a rare understanding of how to live "About seven years ago, not too long before our daughter was born, and a year before my father died, Jane Austen became my only author." In the turbulent period around the birth of her first child and the death of her father, Rachel Cohen turned to Jane Austen to make sense of her new reality. For Cohen, simultaneously grief-stricken and buoyed by the birth of her daughter, reading Austen became her refuge and her ballast. She was able to reckon with difficult questions about mourning, memorializing, living in a household, paying attention to the world, reading, writing, and imagining through Austen’s novels. Austen Years is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of Austen Years widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen's novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter, a moment paired with the grief of Sense and Sensibility and the social bonds of Pride and Prejudice . Later, moving with her family to Chicago, Cohen grapples with her growing children, teaching, and her father’s legacy, all refracted through the denser, more complex Mansfield Park and Emma . With unusual depth and fresh insight into Austen’s life and literature, and guided by Austen’s mournful and hopeful final novel, Persuasion , Rachel Cohen’s Austen Years is a rare memoir of mourning and transcendence, a love letter to a literary master, and a powerful consideration of the odd process that merges our interior experiences with the world at large. "A thoroughly authentic, smart and consoling account of one writer’s commitment to another . . . Austen Years is full of neat observations and provocative comparisons, folded into the story with a subtlety that keeps Cohen’s sense from getting sententious." -- Sophie Gee, The New York Times Book Review (editors' choice) "Among the myriad passionate readers of Austen, who seem to produce dozens of new books about her every year, Cohen occupies a special place . . . Cohen writes with emotion and insight about her father and his death." -- Marion Winik, The Washington Post "In this memoir-essay hybrid, Cohen reads and rereads Jane Austen’s work and tells us not just what it all means but also what it does for us ― how the author’s pin-sharp assessments and characters instruct us about the world. There isn’t an ounce of kitsch or flowery claptrap. Instead, Cohen overlays a personal account of grieving her father with the help of Austen’s fiction, emerging with one of the most emotionally astute understandings of the novelist’s work, period." -- Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times "Cohen has taken her fascination with – and personal dependence on – one great author and transmutes it into something any reader in the world will find downright marvelous . . . The book is at once an impressive analysis of Austen’s fiction and a first-rate biography of the author herself. At its heart, however, this story is as much about the joy of reading as it is about anything else . . . a shining account of how indispensable books can be." -- Steve Donoghue, The Christian Science Monitor "[A] tender, rigorous criticism/memoir hybrid . . . [ Austen Years ] intimately matches Jane’s literary interrogations ― especially those about how women process the infinite varieties of grief ― with tender personal sketches. The premise could turn hokey, but Cohen’s readings are invigorating." -- Vulture ( 29 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Summer) "A carefully considered and lyrical memoir . . . Cohen nimbly combines biography, literary criticism and personal reflection. Like Austen’s novels, which were reworked over lengthy periods during which the author’s thoughts and circumstances shifted, Cohen’s memoir – flecked with light and dark, hope and sorrow – has accumulated layers." -- Chloë Ashby, TLS "A complicated hybrid of a book that mixes Cohen’s singular insight into Austen as a writer with Cohen’s personal life . . . a moving and intelligent guide to reading Austen in our days of death . . . In the dark spring of 2020, Cohen turned me back toward Austen. I’m glad she did." -- Ann Fabian, The National Book Review "This haunting and haunted narrative pulls off the impossible task of allowing us to read over a thoughtful writer’s shoulder, allowing us t