Kate Doyle, author of I Meant it Once, visits ABC Amsterdam for a book reading and Q&A with moderator Talia Stone!

I Meant It Once is the much-praised debut of author Kate Doyle. This short story collection explores the inner lives of young women during their transformative twenties, navigating relationships, nostalgia for the past, and the uncertainty of the future. We are very excited to welcome Kate Doyle to our Amsterdam store for a reading and Q&A moderated by Talia Stone! Afterwards, Kate will sign your copy of her book.



With this sharp and witty debut collection, author Kate Doyle captures precisely that time of life when so many young women are caught in between, pre-occupied by nostalgia for past relationships—with friends, roommates, siblings—while trying to move forward into an uncertain future. In “That Is Shocking,” a college student relates a darkly funny story of romantic humiliation, one that skirts the parallel story of a friend she betrayed. In others, young women long for friends who have moved away, or moved on. In “Cinnamon Baseball Coyote” and other linked stories about siblings Helen, Evan, and Grace, their years of inside jokes and brutal tensions simmer over as the three spend a holiday season in an amusing whirl of rivalry and mutual attachment, and a generational gulf widens between them and their parents. Throughout, in stories both lyrical and haunting, young women search for ways to break free from the expectations of others and find a way to be in the world.



Written with crystalline prose and sly humor, the stories in build to complete a profoundly recognizable portrait of early adulthood and the ways in which seemingly incidental moments can come to define the stories we tell ourselves. For fans of Elif Batuman, Ottessa Moshfegh, Patricia Lockwood, and Melissa Bank, these stories about being young and adrift in today’s world go down easy and pack a big punch.



About the author

Kate Doyle’s short stories have been published in No Tokens, Electric Literature, Split Lip, Wigleaf, and other publications. Originally from New England, she is a former bookseller and a 2021 A Public Space Writing Fellow. She has lived in New York City, Amsterdam, and Ithaca, NY. Originally, Kate is from the corner of New England closest to New York City—or that’s the short answer to where she’s from, anyway. She has a dog who loves books as much as she does.



About the moderator

Talia Stone started writing when she was old enough to hold a pen and never stopped. At The Story Lounge, she teaches her students the basics of writing, sticking to the core ingredients of storytelling and making her fall in love with words over and over again.

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Event source:
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The American Book Center

An Evening with Kate Doyle – author of I Meant It Once at ABC Amsterdam

Lectures and debates

Book Chats
Friday, December 16th 18:00-19:30
On Location: Virtually, via Zoom
Join the event via the Zoom link below!
https://zoom.us
https://www.meetup.com/Book-Chats/

This monthly book club is dedicated to the fine art of slowing down, taking stock, and doing what we do best: talking about our favorite books. Like-minded booklovers from around the community gather - via Zoom! - to chat about a selected novel which has been making waves and capturing imaginations around the world.

For our next meeting, we will read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin:

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

With a focus on English-language fiction published during the last few years, Book Chats is a space for making friends and diving together into the diverse worlds offered up by some of today's most dynamic voices in literature. Here is a selection of titles we have been reading since March 2018.

Happy reading!

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(Text and image)
https://abc.nl/events/event-details/book-chats/3111

🍿 Chill

Book Chats - ABC

Party

This monthly book club is dedicated to the fine art of slowing down, taking stock, and doing what we do best: talking about our favorite books. Like-minded booklovers from around the community gather - via Zoom! - to chat about a selected novel which has been making waves and capturing imaginations around the world.

For our next meeting, we will read The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell:

Set at the heart of the treacherous political world of the Italian Renaissance, this is the masterful story of a young woman's battle for her very survival, written with all the drama and verve that made HAMNET an international bestseller.

Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de' Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings. But when her older sister dies on the eve of marriage to Alfonso d'Este, ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate her appears before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in uncomfortable finery for the painting which is to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferrarese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, her future hangs entirely in the balance.

With a focus on English-language fiction published during the last few years, Book Chats is a space for making friends and diving together into the diverse worlds offered up by some of today's most dynamic voices in literature. Here is a selection of titles we have been reading since March 2018.

Happy reading!

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(Text and image)
https://abc.nl/events/event-details/book-chats/3104

Adam

Maggie

Christie

Eric

Anna

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Independent English-language bookstore in the Netherlands with stores in Amsterdam (1972), The Hague (1976) and Leidschendam (2021). Call or email our stores for real-time stock checks: www.abc.nl 

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https://abc.nl/

The American Book Center

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An Evening with Kate Doyle – author of I Meant It Once at ABC Amsterdam

Book Chats - ABC

Book Chats - ABC

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December