Tag Archives: a favorite novelist

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Kate Stover

Because we all make questionable decisions from time to time, it’s only natural to wonder if we are our own worst enemy, or if we are the hero in our life, or something in between. Many memoirs begin with this … Continue reading →

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“Fiction . . . is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web . . .”

Posted on July 20, 2023 by Kate Stover

Virginia Woolf continues, “attached ever so lightly, perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves.” It’s only when the web is … Continue reading →

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“For what could be more peculiar than a crowd of grown-up people . . . discussing scholarly niceties that meant nothing to most of the world?”

Posted on November 22, 2022 by Kate Stover

One of the things that I love about Barbara Pym’s novels is that her characters never set out to impress anyone. They acknowledge that their choices – for example, attending an academic conference as treatment for a broken heart – … Continue reading →

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“Thorny people. They don’t always follow the etiquette.”

Posted on April 8, 2022 by Kate Stover

What do you think a story about a thorny family would include? If it’s by Anne Tyler, and if it covers a period of sixty years, you can expect to see that things don’t always work out. For example, the … Continue reading →

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“When his wife had been alive, he had hardly noticed Jessie Morrow; indeed, if possible, he had noticed her even less than he had noticed his wife.”

Posted on March 23, 2022 by Kate Stover

In a 1978 BBC radio program, Barbara Pym said, “Perhaps I’ve been influenced by something I was once told about Proust – that he was said to go over all his characters and make them worse.” I laughed when I … Continue reading →

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“Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women . . .nor have I ever thought of myself as being like her.”

Posted on March 28, 2020 by Kate Stover

When I read about “the unexpected joy of repeat experiences” during difficult times, I immediately thought of the pleasure I have in rereading novels by Barbara Pym.  Surely one of the ways we can cope with the stress of an … Continue reading →

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“The waitress seemed to sense that this was not the moment to ask if they had everything they needed.”

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Kate Stover

Of course, the waitress was right: these people clearly didn’t have everything they needed. This is familiar territory for fans of Anne Tyler. We count on seeing an “eccentric ecosystem of relatives and neighbors” who aren’t getting the assurances, stability … Continue reading →

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