One Thing I Know - Pati Hill

One Thing I Know is Pati Hill's third novel, first published in 1962, when she was forty-one and had just given birth to her first and only child. It is the last novel she wrote before claiming to "quit writing in favor of housekeeping".

Written in the purest tradition of American coming-of-age stories, "One Thing I Know" follows a sixteen-year-old girl, Francesca Hollins, as she discovers an unexpected taste for autonomy. The bravado of her affirmation cannot mask the seriousness of her conviction: "One thing I know, I will never be in love again." Francesca's journal begins with this statement, and neither Danny, a young boyfriend already haunted by bourgeois dreams, nor her mother, a woman she believes lacks all imagination, can convince her otherwise.

The novel recounts how Francesca discovers an unexpected definition of her independence, something Diane Arbus perceived when she wrote to Hill: "I am more than ever convinced and maybe [Francesca] is too, that people are born old and that life has to be lived backwards and there is no convenient shortcut like forwards."

Afterword by Baptiste Pinteaux.

The cover of this edition of ‘‘One Thing I Know’’, based on the original dust jacket of the first 1962 hardcover edition, faithfully reproduces the title in Pati Hill’s own handwriting.

Daisy Editions, 2022
English
Softcover, 108 Pages
120mm × 180mm
Edition of 600