Laurie Colwin's stories are ridiculously well crafted. Each is a lesson in how to write. In class, I often talk to my students about the importance of being able to capture a character in a few details, a couple quick brushstrokes. I don't know if I've ever read an author with as deft a hand at c...
On the top of the list of books-to-not-read while your mother is dying.I picked it up because I loved Colwin's prose, even though I didn't love Happy All the Time. Then I thought I would scream if I read about Billy yawning one more time. I put the book down but didn't put it away...Today I had t...
Normally I get annoyed with books that focus too heavily on romantic relationships, especially (and I realize it makes me sound like an uncultivated brute to admit this) when they're written by women and from the perspective of women. So here is a collection of short stories, each with a female p...
I read all of Laurie Colwin's novels about 20 years ago and recently reread this book. The protangonist, Geraldine, reminded me of female protangonists in other Colwin novels such as "Happy All the Time" and "Family Happiness" in that she is a privileged woman who may complain about the inequiti...
Happy All the TimeBy Laurie ColwinI love Laurie Colwin. I suppose it’s more accurate to say that I love her books, but she is one of those authors whom you feel you know through her books, especially as she wrote several books of food essays as well as five novels and two books of short stories. ...
It absorbs sadness and sops up loneliness. It provides work, company, and entertainment. It makes tasks for idle hands and allows an anxious spirit to hide in its capacious bosom. With no one around her, Polly felt as if she had slipped out of earth orbit. She sat on the edge of the chaise in the...
It did not seem to Jane Louise that she was pregnant, and it did not seem that the press was going to be sold any minute. Jane Louise felt that her life was a time bomb. One day she would wake up, feel queer, and have a baby. One day she would walk into her office and be told that it had changed ...