'She commands her material so well that we are made to believe that her fiction—her plot—is no stranger than our lives.'  --Ms. Magazine   Listening to Billie is a brilliant portrait of a contemporary woman adventurously, decisively embarked on her own life.   We first glimpse Eliza Hamilton Quarles as a blonde boarding-school student, sitting in a sophisticated New York club, listening to Billie Holiday. She is on the brink of her marriage to her older, worldly date. Twenty years later, a mother, divorced, she, tentatively begins a new life, with new lovers, new interests, new strength, even a new, more comfortable identity.