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 neighbour, Dolly. Mixing anecdotes with existential thoughts, the novel describes the gradual disruption of the heroine’s daily life. Almost every chapter 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.” Pati Hill (1921-2014) was born in Kentucky and died in France. Her practice as a writer—which flourished between 1951 and 1962—was irrevocably transformed in the early 1970s by her encounter with a photocopier, turning her into a producer of pictures, illustrated texts and exhibitions.