In this episode of the Book Maven: A Literary Revue, Bethanne Patrick sits down with Xochitl Gonzalez to talk about how experience can help us as writers. We discuss the importance of observing changes in life to guide us in crafting our fiction, and what’s inspiring her as she develops her new book.
This week Ethan Frome takes the stage in another installment of Canon or Can It.We’ll discuss how it exists within a context of similar works from the same era, and how maybe with a little experience, we can identify better novels to give canonical bona fides.
Can Bethanne beat the clock? She gives us 6 Recs for our To Be Read lists. Titles include: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, Improvement by Joan Silber, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt,. . .And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmeyer, A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska, and Dixon, Descending by Karen Outen.
Find Bethanne on X, Substack, Instagram, and Threads.
The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.
All titles mentioned: The Gray Wolfby Louise Penny, part of her Three Pines series.Drawn Testimony by Jane Rosenberg, The World According to Garp by John Irving, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Rainbowby D.H. Lawrence, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, 'Tis by Frank McCourt, Teacher Manby Frank McCourt, And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, Dixon, Descending by Karen Outen, Improvement by Joan Silber, and Joan Silber’s upcoming book and Mercy.
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to season two of The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. This season, we'll talk to leading authors, dig into the classics to decide which should stay in the literary canon, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode. But first…
First, this week, I talked to Xochitl Gonzalez about how experience can help us as writers.
Join us in conversation as we talk about what's inspiring her as she develops her new book.
BP: Not everyone writes a book when they're 23 and gets on the New Yorker, you know, five under 35 or 500 under 40 or whatever their lists are, some people come to writing after other pieces of life, whether it's jobs, raising families you know, not knowing what to do with ourselves. There's just all kinds of ways that you can, let's say, delay writing a book. But those delays, and you've talked about this before can add to the writing. So I wanted to talk with you today about that. What do you think?
XG: Oh my gosh, you know, so much. And it's funny because I'm working on my third book now and it's a character just looking back, like, let's see, she's probably about 32 at the time that she's telling the story looking back on something that happened when she was about 28 and I was …
BP: All that way back.
XG: Yeah, you know, not, not that far, but I was thinking about how there’s a phase like in your 30s where you start to put patterns together and like, you know, you start to, you've seen things enough that you're like, oh, I see, like, this is like, an unavoidable now that I can see, like, I've now lived just a little bit longer that I'm like, I understand this, what it would happen now in a different way. And I think, you know, one of the things that I think is so great about aging and doing things a little older is that you not only have more access to people and like experiences and behavior, but you have access to the way that your own viewpoint has changed at different phases of your own life. You know, like, and like, so I think about like, if I'm writing a character like with my last book, even I was thinking about it was so fun because there was like a character who was in college and the way she was seeing a professor who was probably in his late thirties, you know, like very late thirties and he's getting a divorce and to her, he's like this sad old man, you know, like but that is how you saw people even though, you know, right? Like, it's like he's only about 40, but like, like, I think it's also the access to how the world is seen at different phases of our life and how we would react to like a 60 year old character is going to have conflict in a very different way than a 28 year old character is going to have conflict, right? And it's just interesting to kind of use that knowledge of watching all the people in your life age, and how they see things differently. And if it's like, it's just this awesome thing to understand and see.
BP: Writing when you have more experience, while your novels have a lot of fun stuff in them, they have a lot of serious stuff in them as well. And some of the serious stuff is, you know, some of it is interpersonal. Some of it is bigger. Some of it is, you know, on the political stage, whether it's about sexuality and identity or, you know, power given to a territory, sovereignty, if you will. And you know, all of those kinds of things. Did you find that was something that grew out of the way you wrote, or was that something that you decided, I need to learn how to do this because these are the things I need to write about.
XG: I think that what I found is that in the realm of media, right? Like, I went into fiction before I ended up becoming a non fiction writer, so like, it's the opposite. But, you know, for my first book in particular, and then I think I just sort of realized that these are the things that I'm fascinated with. But in my first book, I really took on, I was trying to find, invent a plot that was entertaining in order to call attention to something that I felt media could not fully realize, like in a humanistic way, like it kept it sort of two dimensional, and unless you knew people living in Puerto Rico, let's say, or people that were, you know, Puerto Rican Americans, like in the diaspora you might not have any sense of feeling about it. You know what I mean? And I think and I was feeling this sense of real sadness around gentrification of my own hometown in Brooklyn, and I felt, I don't think I could read read dozens of articles about the situation in Puerto Rico or about Brooklyn gentrifying, and none of them make you feel the way humans feel, and so I had to invent a story to walk people through these feelings, to try to create some empathy, where I didn't think there would, there was awareness enough to feel empathy.
BP: And that is, of course, another one of the things that's so important about having some experience under your belt before you start writing is that empathy, isn't it?
XG: I think that that's right. And I think, you know, and I think even with the second book, I just, I wanted to talk about this idea, you know, this word erasure kind of became very buzzy, but I was like, but you know, it's an actual process that has happened over time. And I kind of wanted to look at that and then how that impacts people, you know, like, because I, as a creator, like, you know, as a creator doing, you know, working on adaptations of my book for in Hollywood was seeing the lack of like sort of rungs in the ladder between me and like the person that had come before me. Like, I'm like, Oh my gosh. And how that was making my job harder to some extent, because there wasn't cultural fluency, let's say between me and the people that are around the side of power. And that like, and sort of from that, I had this idea for the second book, but I think the main thing about the second book is that then it was really important for me, the villain, obviously one person's a murderer in the second book, but like the villain of the book.
BP: Don't spoil it for me. No, I'm kidding.
XG: No, but it's less of a person. It's less a person than its systems. You know, it's like systems and the way systems operate. And it was really important for me to show that there are good, well intended people that work within systems. And so, you know, that same sort of sad 40 year old man, he's a professor, and it was important for me as a fiction writer of a certain age, because I think when you're young and you're mad, there are good people and bad people. And I think when you're older and you've known people, you're like, there are people with opinions that cause good, and there are people with opinions that sometimes cause bad, and they might be good people, but they believe this thing.
BP: And, there are, because this, this week, as we know, we've had some awful news in the literary community, there are people who, can have these lovely, you know, genteel conversations and you think, oh, what a great, great person that is.
XG: That's right. Well, and I just, you know, I think one of the things that I've been thinking about and that also age kind of gives you is like, it's like just because somebody has become very good at something, anything, you know, like, that doesn't mean that they are a good person. Like you can be very successful and be a sort of fundamentally kind of rotten human being, like, and having money or status doesn't equate to virtue. You need to, not only do you need to move through the world for, I think, a few decades to kind of really see that because you don't presume you can't just presume them to be bad. That's just a caricature, but really understanding it right. Like, I think you have to move through the world for a few years. But I also think that that was a case where like sort of understanding power, also, I was really fortunate to work in a few different professions where I had access to a lot of people that were successful and powerful. And I think that then it gave you like kind of an upfront seat to look at these dynamics. And I couldn't have done the kind of writing that I do now without having walked those particular paths. Right. And I think I really think, you know, there's, sometimes young people say to me, like, I really want to be a writer. I am like, go off and do something else for like five years. Right. Like, and then, no, really, like, like, really, like, it's like, cause I, I think, I don't know, like different books affect people in different ways, but like, I love being emotionally affected. And I think having some, um, like sort of breath of sort of weird things that happen to you to pull from will just enable you to just increase that little palette a lot more.
BP: No, it's so true that you're, you know, your own experience is, that's the right about what you know, that's, it's not only right what you know, but use what you've gone through to get yourself going. That's what I want to tell people when I hear them recite that. No, we're not saying you can only write about, I don't know, being a CPA in downtown, you know, Baltimore, right, that's right. You know, write about what you know, because it will help you get to the questions you're asking.
XG: And I think it will help. I think, again, to go back to that pattern thing that age starts, it's like, you're like, oh, this is just this, like, you know, like it's like, we used to see that with like, brides actually, like we'd see like, oh my gosh, like this person should not be getting married because they would inevitably make, make the whole wedding about one thing and like, and they would obsess over this one thing. And if that one thing wasn't going to be perfect and the whole thing was going to be bad and like, and it didn't matter, the thing could change, right? Like the thing could change, but like, it was like a manifestation of doubt. Like I would like to say so what I learned from that is it was like, oh, well, that's a great tool for a character. Like when they are doubtful that they become fixated on something like that's not like, you know, like that's just a behavioral pattern that you can observe.
BP: That is like a master class moment with Xochitl Gonzalez. I mean, like, you know, people, if you're a writer and you didn't, that is great because I'll tell you, I am currently the, what do you call the mother of the bride before the wedding? So my, my daughter's wedding is in September and, you know, it's been really interesting to see what things get her upset? We are having the best time. Okay, we are first of all, way ahead of all kinds of things. We get along really well, and we communicate really well. This is not a bridezilla or a momzilla situation at all. But she had decided she was going to go with this one particular hair and makeup thing because another person was booked and she went with it and wasn't happy and when it was done and she came back and I said, oh, you know, I know you don't like it, but hey, you look beautiful. That was for her, you know, the point of pain. Now fortunately the first person had a cancellation. We went in, we loved her. She's perfect. Aces. Everything's great. Sunshine again, but I thought, ooh, this is, I'm going to watch this. Like what it she's really what she's, and it's not because she has any issues about her own appearance. It's because she wants to be so beautiful and perfect for her wonderful fiance. And I thought this is really sweet. BUt if you get too focused on this, what happens if it rains? What happens if you have a rash that day? Like, you know, so I know exactly what you mean. And that is the stuff we can use in fiction.
XG: Yeah. I think it's much more when people say, write what you know, I think it's really much more like emotional flows, right? Like, because like most stories are universal stories. And it's like, and you're just pulling the thing, right? Like, it's like if you think about like, you know, The Devil Wears Prada is essentially like, right? Like, it's like about a bad boss, but really it's about a power dynamic and a desire to please. Like, it's all these little, you know, Stockholm syndrome, like a bunch of things. Like it could have happened in a fashion magazine. It could have happened, it could have happened anywhere. You know, like it could have happened in a publishing house. You could have happened anywhere, like in any office, like, you know, it's really about like this desire to be young and ambitious and like who gatekeeps and how you get past it and what you're willing to do. And like, how will you compromise yourself? And so like, you know, I think like it's that is much more. You know, and that was an author that really did write what they knew because they'd worked at a magazine, but you could have taken that and done it, you know, and adapted that story almost anywhere else, right? Like, it's like, so I think that really much, it's much more that, and I think the age just helps you see the patterns. You know, like, it's like, I and I'll say like, with Olga, I wrote a mom character that, you know, was very much based on a dynamic I had with my mother. But at the end of the day, like, and I chose to do these letters, right? Like, we're like this idea that like, the mom can write to them, but they have no way of getting letters to the mom. Okay. And this one way street and the way in which women all across the country and now like, you know, it's, it's out in a couple of other countries. So around the world, women will be like, this is how it is with me and my mother, she talks to me, but doesn't listen to me. Like I, she tells me what she thinks, but doesn't hear what's actually happening. And it was like, you know, I think that these like, really the writing, what you know, like that's, that was missing a very specific dynamic, but like it is had a lot of universality, you know what I mean? Like, and I think that like, but sometimes again, only at 42, I guess it was when I wrote that book 42, only at 42 could, did I have the healthy space from the relationship to also not make the mom a full villain? You know, like, she's like, she's got these other things, like, because you're like, Oh, that's just my, you know, my mom had some experiences, you know, like, and it was because of that. I ended up doing a profile on her in the Atlantic. Cause I was like, you know, I really want to understand that more, even more than I, I did
BP: Talk about the empathy that comes from experience. Xochitl Gonzales. This is exciting. And you're definitely coming back on when this new book comes out. I'm telling you…
XG: I love it. I love it. Thank you.
BP: Thank you.
Thank you. Xochitl for joining us this week. You can find all of Xochitl’s books, wherever books are sold. Now let's move on to Friday reads where we'll see what you've been reading this week.
Welcome back to another edition of Friday Reads where we listen to what you're reading. As usual, my producer Jordan is here to help me get through these next few posts and I'm really, really excited about how different all three of these books are. So Jordan, what have we got up first?
JA: Our first post we've got is from D still learning who says latest of the excellent three pine series best read in order Canadian author. Most settings in Canada, and the book is The Gray Wolf by Louise Penny.
BP: So this, the image with this post is of The Gray Wolf's cover. And I love the fact that they're always willing with the Three Pines series to do something beautiful with the cover, you know, to sort of commission a painting or to think of a different kind of image. And so here we've got these two gorgeous paper art wolves, very light gray, and they are against a deep blue green background. So it's really striking. Anyone who knows Louise Penny's Three Pines series knows that she created Inspector Armand Gamache of the Quebec Sûreté, if I'm saying all of that correctly. She lives just over the border in Canada. And as a matter of fact, I think it was last week or so that Penny said she's not going to be coming back to the United States for anything soon. Don't blame her. If I were her, stay in Canada. But legions of mystery lovers absolutely adore this series. There's also an actual TV adaptation. And in this installment, The Grey Wolf, Gamache and his son in law must return to a very remote location that has traumatic associations for both of them and they have to do it because they're trying to not just discover what's behind a murder, but they need to avert a disaster for the entire province. And this will be for you if you love Ann Cleeves and her Shetland murder mysteries, Deborah Crombie's English murder mysteries, Attica Locke’s East Texas murder mysteries. And even I love Sujata Massey's books too. I think if you're a Louise Penny stan, you should look for one of these, but I need to move on to the next book. So Jordan, what is it?
JA: The next one we've got is from Peter C. Link, who says for Hashtag Friday Reads, he's reading Drawn Testimony by Jane Rosenberg.
BP: So this image is one of Jane Rosenberg's court sketches, courtroom sketches, and the subtitle of the book gives you a lot of info, which is ‘my four decades as a courtroom sketch artist’. Now, Jane C. Rosenberg isn't just any courtroom sketch artist. She has covered cases involving Mick Jagger, Martha Stewart, Tom Brady, and Deflategate, John Lennon's murder trial, Ghislaine Maxwell's awful doings, John Gotti, Harvey Weinstein, and the Boston Marathon Bomber. Let us not forget our current chief executive. I, that's all I, I can't even, yeah, so. But this is a really fascinating book because as we all know, courtrooms are one of the last places where cameras are not allowed, or at least not allowed all the time. And so sketch artists like Rosenberg are the people who give us a window into that world. And they're supposed to be, of course, as objective as possible in their sketches, but in portraying reality, there's no way it's not that they show their bias, but they do show biases that exist in the courtroom. So I think it's a really cool book. There are other books about courtroom artists, like The Art of Justice by Marilyn Church and William J. Hennessy Jr.’s All Rise. So you might be interested in that if you are someone who does follow courtroom sagas a great deal at the time. So one more post and what do we have for our last Friday Reads, Jordan?
JA: I love this one. This is from swagger and swagger says, currently reading The World According to Garp by John Irving, originally published in 1978, and it is Swagger's first time reading this one.
BP: I love this too so much, Jordan, because I mean, this, this book, it's just a banger. It really is. And the image is a retro book jacket. It's really a classic Irving jacket. It's got a black background with red and gold lettering, sort of a, you know, an italic-esque font, really classic. And here's the thing, Irving, he's still writing and publishing and wrestling. We all know he wrestles. He's also still arguing for the rights of rich people. So I wish he would just release new novels and stay quiet, sir. But, you know, I don't rule the world. So Garp contains multitudes. One of the things I think that's most fascinating about it that has stood up for now four and a half decades is that there are some wildly feminist ideas. They're not necessarily correct or incorrect, but they are pretty, pretty, pretty, amazing. And so that's what helps it stand up to scrutiny. You may love John Irving's work. You may hate John Irving's work. You might love one of his novels and not like another, but The World According to Garp is really one of those sui generis books that everyone should pick up. I'm glad Swagger's reading it. If you like Irving, you might, believe it or not, like Fredrik Backman. You might think, oh, that sounds pretty soft, Fredrik Backman's books, but they're not. They're deceptively easy to read. Kevin Wilson's humor reminds me a lot of John Irving, and so does Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. I highly recommend, and Meg Wolitzer and Kristen Arnett, two extremely different novelists of different generations and different brands of humor, nonetheless, I think they stand up to Irving's work as well.
So that is it for another Friday Reads segment, and we're going to be back, of course, next week with more. I hope you enjoyed these, and as always, thank you, Jordan, for helping me out.
We've got another canon or can it today and if you'll indulge, we're going to get a bit deep here. The whole idea of a canon comes from the Greek word kanon. I don't know if I'm saying that right, which among other things means rule. We use it today to identify literary works that serve as benchmarks for movements, genres, and time periods. Today, we'll be talking about Ethan Frome, how it exists within a context of similar works from the same era, and how maybe with a little experience, we can identify better novels to give canonical bona fides to.
So canon or can it, Ethan Frome. Why do they call it a crush? Because when you and your lover sled straight into an elm tree, crushed is what you feel. Ethan Frome is a story of a man who resents his ailing wife, develops feelings for her young caretaker, and attempts a love packed suicide with the girl. When that fails, he must carry out the rest of his days in a strange, resentful throuple. Edith Wharton's 1911 novella begins with a frame story, a traveling narrator, who is unnamed, stays in Starksfield, Massachusetts and develops a curiosity for the disabled man he sees at the same time each day at the post office.
Striking, unfriendly, and quiet, Ethan Frome, that's the name of the man at the post office, has a mystery about him. He has a scar across his forehead and a foreshortened right side. Neighbors greet him solemnly and are reluctant to discuss what happened to him. Our way into the story of Ethan Frome comes by weathered chance.
A storm brings the narrator and Ethan together. This is when we learn about Zeena and Mattie. Decades prior, Ethan's wife Zeena was bedridden from an unknown sickness, something that ailed her body and occupied her mind. The story begins when they finally hire help in the form of Zeena's eager, but mostly useless, younger cousin Mattie.
Ethan begrudges his wife. He only married her because it was winter and he was lonely after the death of his mother, whom Zeena cared for until she died. Zeena thinks about herself too much. She spends all of Ethan's money, and she barely notices him. When we encounter Mattie for the first time, she's wearing a red scarf.
Swifties, if you know, you know. She's swirling around at a church dance. She's vibrant and youthful. Ethan is there to pick her up, as he always does. In the long journeys back and forth, of course, Mattie must be escorted, the two fall for each other, waiting for the perfect evening to go sledding at the hill.
One fateful night, Zeena is out of town and Mattie and Ethan play house. Ethan's giddy. It looks like Mattie made this night special. She put a red ribbon in her hair and got out the nice red pickle dish for the table. Fantasy halts when the cat knocks the dish over, shattering the illusion. Maybe the metaphor, too.
They spend the rest of the evening in a will they or won't they battle of stares until they go their separate ways to bed. When Zeena returns, she discovers the broken dish. It's the last straw. Time for Mattie to leave. Ethan takes Mattie the long way to the station where they come across that same old hill.
Knowing they'll have no chance of happiness once separated, they aim straight for the elm tree. Ethan Frome is a story of voyeurs. The narrator watches Ethan, Ethan watches Mattie, Zeena watches them both, the cat watches them all. The first three quarters of the novella is held together by subtext, gesture, long journeys, and longing stares.
This breaks when Zeena puts her foot down and Ethan kicks into action, only to be halted again by injury and paralysis. When it comes to this segment of this dear podcast, I am reminded of the utility of the literary canon. What purpose do cultural touchstones serve? Should we all be able to make at least a few literary illusions at a dinner party?
Or is it more specific than that? That we should all learn elements of craft from these stories. Or is craft just for writers, critics, and total eggheads? Present company, very much included. I don't think everyone needs to read Ethan Frome. Its passion and pining is eclipsed by other horny star crossed tragedies like Romeo and Juliet and The Great Gatsby.
But! If you already read those, and The Rainbow, and Jane Eyre, and Giovanni's Room, and you don't have your own unrequited love story to distract you, pick up Ethan Frome and take a shot every time they almost touch. However, unlike really good single malt, Ethan Frome does not improve with age. While it may be considered a classic of American literature, I don't believe Wharton's slight novella to be worthy of the canon.
So for me, it's a CAN IT!
Talking to Xochitl got me thinking about the benefits of experience, one of which is the idea of iteration leading to improvements in craft. It can be hard trusting ourselves to grow over time. And to that end, I wanted to share six books by authors who emerged very late and about how that can keep your morale high for your morning pages.
BP: Welcome to this week's six recs where I attempt to give recommendations for six books in less than three minutes. As always, Jordan, my engineer and producer is here to time me. And if I don't make it, as you know, The big book case falls. So we'll see Jordan. Are you ready with the stopwatch?
JA: We're rolling.
BP: Okay. So this week we interviewed Xochitl Gonzalez, who, even though she is relatively young, okay, thinks that she is a later emerging writer. I've got some much later emerging writers for you. And we're going to start with Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. In 1992, when he published his debut novel, Bradley was a youthful 54, but it didn't get its U.S. release until 2009, when he was over 70. The first of Bradley's Flavia de Luce mysteries, and I'm not sure if it's Flavia or Flavia, so please let me know if you do know. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie introduces us to this sparky, intrepid, lonely, and neglected English 11 year old. And she's fascinated with her uncle's abandoned chemistry lab. And it leads her to involvement in a crime investigation. It's 1950s post war Britain. And, you know, Flavia's father is sort of also lonely and neglected nobleman and he doesn't know what to do with his three daughters or his crumbling estate. So the series has 11 books and Flavia and her family and community all progress. Lots of surprises for readers. Check them out.
Next up, Joan Silber's Improvement. Silber was 72 when she won the National Book Critics Circle, Fiction, and Penn Faulkner Awards for this. Her fifth novel. Her books are usually told through interlinked stories. And I don't mean short stories. I mean, characters stories that overlap and intersect in ways. They provide sort of omniscience and it doesn't have to do with omniscient narration, which is sort of out of favor, but it's a kind of, I don't know, God's eye view of what's going on. It's really quite amazing. It feels like experiencing astral projection to me. And here's a really great thing. Silber's got a new novel, Mercy, out fall 2025 from Counterpoint.
Next up is Frank McCourt and his iconic Angela's Ashes. So he published this in 1996 when he was 66 years old. He had been a beloved New York City high school English teacher for decades. But this book catapulted him to fame. It also won the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote ‘Tis, that was a follow up to Angela's Ashes. And then he wrote a memoir about his education career called Teacher Man. He died in 2009, but he lives on in the Upper West Sides, Frank McCourt High School of Writing, Journalism and Literature.
I think that's so cool. I've got a few more for you. I'm going to hurry right along. Helen Hooven Santmyer’s … And Ladies of the Club was a publishing sensation back in 1984 when Putnam picked it up from Ohio State University Press. It became a huge bestseller and a book of the month club selection, which is amazing because it is so long. I can't remember if it's 700 or 900 pages. It's a clunk doorstop that you cannot stop reading. It is wonderful. So she was in her 80s when this book came out. She published other novels. In fact, she published her first one in 1922. This is the one that gave her a place in writing history.
Jane Juska's A Round Heeled Woman, published in 2003, was the 67 year old writer's memoir about sexual Freedom and even licentiousness at an advanced age. And right now, we read all kinds of books about sexy sex. But at the time, Jessica's book was revelatory and groundbreaking. She died in 2017 at the age of 84, but she did publish two more nonfiction books, and she's remembered as a maverick for the rights of older women to enjoy their sensuality.
Finally, Karen Outen's Dixon, Descending, and I'm so excited because Karen is perfect for this. I was on a panel with her a week or so ago. She's 64, and she published Dixon, Descending with a big 5 imprint. just a year or so ago, she's working on a second novel. And she told me that she got the idea for Dixon descending when one day into her consciousness, walked a Black man, she is a woman of color. And she realized he had just come back from summiting Everest. And he was the first Black man to summit Everest in her mind. And he'd come back with a lot of injury and trauma. And that's where this really, really lovely novel comes from. And it's not her first time at the fiction rodeo. She does have an MFA from Michigan, and she's published many short stories in excellent journals. Cannot wait to read Karen's second novel.
There we go. Six Recs. How did I do?
JA: All right, Bethanne. Well, I have to say close to, The And Ladies of the club, this is also on the longer side and came in at four minutes and 58 seconds.
BP: Oh, but you know what? I gave these authors their due, so I am not ashamed.
Thank you, Jordan.
Well, that does it for this episode of The Book Maven, a literary review. Follow us on Substack for our weekly newsletter containing new book releases, commentary, and more. Talk to you next week. The Book Maven, a literary review, is hosted and produced by me, Beth Ann Patrick. It's produced by Christina McBride, with engineering by Jordan Aaron, and our booking producer is Lauren Stack.
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