What’s at stake in this novel is the simple happiness of our struggling writer protagonist. Love and work are what she seeks and there’s no “hook” more complicated than human fulfillment in this beautifully written, moving story.
Some titles are the signifier and some are the sign. This title is verse itself with its built- in juxtaposition of past and future; its complexity. If we’re in the future, then the poet is already de
Strout again, inhabits Lucy Barton, from her former book, I Am Lucy Barton, who in turn inhabits Strout: Barton is a writer who is haunted by her childhood and feels “invisible” even as she publishes
Rooney has a gift for making real the pleasures of sex and intimacy— a shower in the morning while a close friend you’ve just had great sex with makes you coffee—the pleasure of a long friendship, but
