• “A delightful mix of grammar and growth, words and wonder. Patty and her book are both full of life, epitomizing the Latin phrase ad astra per aspera — to the stars through difficulties.”
  –The Washington Post

• “Ann Patty’s late-life affair with Latin has everything: grammar, gossip, lovely gray hair, lust, and mother woes. A book after my own heart.” “
  –Mary Norris, author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

• “most vital. . .are the moments in which Patty lets her word-nerd flag fly, and shows the specificity of Latin’s enriching possibilities for a person who has spent her life working in words.”
  –Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker

• Patty’s goal is not merely to understand Latin, but to inhabit it . . . She isn’t the first retiree to find anxiety in a country retreat, turning to the Latin masters as sources of insight and instruction. . . . like Montaigne, Patty often writes about one subject as a way of writing about many others.”
  –The Christian Science Monitor

• “If you like words, if you have a penchant, even a rusty penchant, for classical culture, allow me to recommend Living with a Dead Language.”
  – The New Criterion

• “Ann Patty’s struggles and triumphs with Latin’s complex laws and mysteries enrich the reader even as they lead her to a new and deeper understanding of the complexities of her own life, past and present, and of her place in the world.”
  –Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It

• “An excellent introduction to [Latin]. . .Patty’s passion for the poetry of Catullus, Propertius, Lucretius, Ovid and Virgil is infectious, and, by paying particular attention to the flexibility in word order available to an author using an inflected language, she succeeds in conveying the canny artistry of Latin verse.”
  —The San Francisco Chronicle

• “I loved this book and the smart, enormously likable woman who has breathed so much life into its pages.”
  —George Hodgman, author of Bettyville

• “A lovely elegy to a dead language and a dead mother, reclaiming both from the past and firmly placing them in the luminous present”
  —Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi

• “What an enchanting tribute not simply to Latin, but to the power words possess to transform a life.”
  —Patricia Hampl, author of The Florist’s Daughter

• “This lively, refreshingly candid and high-spirited book courses with an infectious love of language, and is buoyed by the author’s engaging personality, which shines through on every page.”
  —Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan

In Paperback
June 6, 2017