It was kind of a time suck (long, dull), but there was payoff, as I immediately put it in my novel “The Identicals.” My character finds it on her twin sister’s night stand it’s the book that once belonged to their mother.
I succumbed to a marketing ploy and read “Valley of the Dolls,” by Jacqueline Susann, which was in its 50th anniversary edition this past summer. What’s the best classic novel you recently read for the first time? But it’s the best book I’ve read in the past decade, hands down. But this book was truer than true on the most basic human level. I went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and hence I know the rule: Just because it happened, doesn’t make it true. She criticized it for being “autobiographical” and claimed that the author was cheating on some fictional level. Sobbed! My heart broke so that I could feel the pieces rattling in my chest.Īnd guess what? It got panned in these very pages by another writer I admire. It has possibly the most morally complex plot twist I’ve ever encountered in literature. It’s about life and death and love and parenting. It’s about a young wife and mother diagnosed with awful blood cancer.
The last truly great book I read was “ Alice & Oliver,” by Charles Bock. On my night stand: “ The Nix,” by Nathan Hill “The Excellent Lombards,” by Jane Hamilton and “ A Separation,” by Katie Kitamura. And they will hereby be known as “Manda” and “David.” These two individuals are not only the smartest people I know, they are the smartest people anyone knows. We don’t live in the same place, so most of this book talk is done via text. Instead, I am part of a “group” that includes two other people who advise me on What to Read Next. I want to begin by saying that I have never been asked to join a book group. What books are currently on your night stand? Salinger, John Cheever and Flannery O’Connor: “I’m serving very cold Veuve Clicquot and a bowl of mixed nuts.”
The author of “The Identicals” says that for a literary dinner party, she would invite J.D.
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