Pati Hill, Impossible Dreams

Impossible Dreams was Pati Hill’s last published novel, released in 1976 after it was partially published two years earlier in the Carolina Quarterly under the title “An Angry French Housewife.” Hill tells the story of Geneviève, a middle-aged woman whose life is turned upside down when she unexpectedly falls in love with her neighbor, Dolly. Mixing anecdotes with existential thoughts, the novel describes the gradual disruption of the heroine’s daily life. Almost every chapter (the length of which varies from a single sentence to no more than three pages) is accompanied by a xerograph of a photograph, selected by Hill with permission from its maker. The resulting combination of text and image constitutes her most ambitious attempt to produce a work in which “the two elements fuse to become something other than either.”

This novel is one of the most incisive examples of Hill’s writing—dry and impartial, yet managing to capture the contradictory feelings of her characters. In a letter addressed to the photographer Eva Rubinstein asking for reproduction rights, she writes: “My book is about a woman with a little girl and a husband who falls in love with a woman and a little girl and a husband and loses them all, just like in your mirror. It doesn’t sound very cheerful but it is mainly funny.”

This summer, Daisy will release a facsimile of the out-of-print work that, after almost 50 years since its initial publication, has become a coveted collector’s item. [publisher’s note]

Editors: Ana Baliza and Baptiste Pinteaux
Graphic design: Ana Baliza based on the original edition by Pati Hill
Publisher: Daisy Editions
ISBN 9782957661152
176 pages  
2025

Stock: ✔
15 Eur