Lynda Barry says a “happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it’s there”. But there’s more to it, she says: “The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn’t dead.”* Doubleday Canada, 2015 If one reads a
Read it? I hadn't even heard of it. Despite having read all of Curtis Sittenfeld's other books. Ah, well, it all made sense when I recognized that it was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice. See, not REALLY a Curtis Sittenfeld novel. Merely Curtis Sittenfeld in Jane Austen's clothing. But, then, this
Browsing with a bookish friend in Type Books the other day, I literally gasped when she gestured to Eligible; I had missed the news that Curtis Sittenfeld had something new on the shelves. Random House, 2016 There aren't that many authors who'll make me gasp (but it also
Fever at Dawn by Péter Gárdos began with a box of letters, or, more accurately, the letter-writers, who would become his parents. House of Anansi, 2016 "But for fifty years I did not know that their letters still existed. In the midst of political unheaval and the chaos of moving to
It's clear from the beginning: one might long for escape from this narrative, might opt for a bloody end rather than endure more misery. House of Anansi, 2016 "No one but a fool could look so happy in a miserable house, could they? The mice here probably throw
