I will fall for a book with a unique, compelling narrative voice—or voices—every time. Maggie O’Farrell’s This Must Be the Place. Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow. North Woods by Daniel Mason. And so I fell for the first-person narrator of I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger, who starts the book by telling us “Here at the beginning it must be said the End was on everyone’s mind.” A casual, genial … [Read more...]
Review of “Lolly Willowes”
Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) was a British author who wrote poetry, short stories, and novels, among other things, including a biography of T. H. White. I have a collection of letters between Warner and William Maxwell, an editor at the New Yorker, to which Warner submitted poetry and short stories. They were both terrific writers, and I enjoy dipping in and out of the book. But other than … [Read more...]