Lurie died under hospice care in Ithaca, New York on December 3, 2020, at age 94.Īs I was reading, I increasingly hated the tone and style of the book. She was previously married to author Jonathan Peale Bishop had three sons from this marriage. Lurie lived in Ithaca, New York, and was married to the writer Edward Hower. In 2012, she was awarded a two-year term as the official author of the state of New York. Lurie officially retired from Cornell in 1998, but continued to teach and write. In addition to her novels, Lurie’s interest in children’s literature led to three collections of folk tales and two critical studies of the genre. Her most recent novel is The Last Resort (1998). In 1984, she published Foreign Affairs, her best-known novel, which traces the erotic entanglements of two American professors in England. It was followed by the well-received The Nowhere City (1966) and The War Between the Tates (1974). It won favorable reviews and established her as a keen observer of love in academia. Her first novel, Love and Friendship (1962), is a story of romance and deception among the faculty of a snowbound New England college.

The Language of Houses discusses historical and regional styles and the use of materials such as stone and wood and concrete, as well as contemplating the roles of stairs and mirrors, windows and doors, tiny rooms and cathedral-like expanses, illustrating its conclusions with illuminating literary references and the comments of experts in the field.Īccompanied by lighthearted original drawings, The Language of Houses is an essential and highly entertaining new contribution to the literature of modern architecture.Īlison Lurie was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author of fiction, children's books and nonfiction.īorn in Chicago and raised in White Plains, New York, she joined the English department at Cornell University in 1970, where she taught courses on children’s literature, among others. Schools, churches, government buildings, museums, prisons, hospitals, restaurants, and of course, houses and apartments-all of them speak to human experience in vital and varied ways.

Now Lurie has returned with a companion book, The Language of Houses, a lucid, provocative and entertaining look at how the architecture of buildings and the spaces within them both reflect and affect the people who inhabit them. Amusing, enlightening and full of literary allusion, the book was highly praised and widely anthologized. In 1981 Alison Lurie published The Language of Clothes, a meditation on costume and fashion as an expression of history, social status and individual psychology.

The Language of Houses by Alison Lurie