What the blurb tells us: When Chris Kraus, an unsuccessful artist pushing forty, spends an evening with a rogue academic named Dick, she falls madly and inexplicably in love, enlisting her husband in her haunted pursuit. Dick proposes a kind of game between them, but when he fails to answer their letters Chris continues
Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way. To be frank, the first time I met her I wasn’t even attracted to her. Middling height; bobbed hair neither long nor short; jaundiced, sickly-looking skin; somewhat prominent cheekbones; her tied, sallow aspect told me all I needed
What the blurb says: So overwhelmed was Marie de Gournay by the work of French essayist and philosopher Michel de Montaigne that when she finally met him, she stabbed herself with a hairpin until the blood ran in order to show her devotion. An awkward, obsessive character, she set herself against the world in
Horace was alone in the city and he realized that being alone in the city was worse than being alone on the ranch. Because when he was alone on the ranch he had the dream of the city, the dream of what he would become in the city. But now he was there and
Leo had been avoiding his wife, Victoria, who was barely speaking to him and his sister Beatrice who wouldn't stop speaking to him—rambling on and on about getting together for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. In July. Leo hadn't spent a holiday with his family in twenty years, since the mid-'90s if he was remembering correctly: he wasn't
"I have to keep convincing myself", Helen said when they got outside, "that this is really happening. You're all so matter-of-fact about it, but the truth is that he is dying in there and I have to go and tell my mother." Helen's beloved little brother is dying. This brings the family together again
What the sort-of blurb tells us: "The Book of Other People is just that: a book of other poeple. Open its covers and you'll make a whole host of new acquaintances. Nick Hornby and Posy Simmonds present the constantly diverging writing life of Jamie Johnson; Hari Kunzru twitches open his net curtains to reveal
People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that rock solid belief, that
What the blurb tells us: Elf and Yoli are two smart, loving sisters. Elf is a world-renowned pianist, glanorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yoli is divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. When Elf's latest suicide attempt leaves her hospitalised weeks before
I haven't the courage, or perhaps the hardness, to withstand the tremendous pathos of this life. I love life's casual beauty — fear its awful strength. — Jack Kerouac The Sea is my Brother What the blurb tells us: In the spring of 1943, not long after his first tour as a Merchant Marine, twenty-one-year-old