Heartburn
Nora Ephron
A food writer's marriage falls apart while she's pregnant, told with jokes and recipes. Bitter, hilarious, and over far too fast.
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★ 5At Weddings and Wakes
Alice McDermott
An Irish-Catholic family in New York, seen through the kids being shuttled to their grandmother's apartment. McDermott makes the ordinary ache.
★ 5The Amateur Marriage
Anne Tyler
A story about a marriage that shouldn’t have happened. A gorgeous recreation of Baltimore from 1940s to present-day. I recommended it to Aliza, and she left me multiple voice notes about how much she loved it.
★ 5Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis can do more in two sentences than most writers manage in twenty pages. Tiny, strange, razor-sharp stories.
★ 5The Georges' wife
Elizabeth Jolley
The last of Elizabeth Jolley's Vera Wright trilogy, about a young woman who becomes maid to one sibling and mistress to another. Spare, tender, and quietly devastating — it swept the Australian book prizes for a reason.
★ 5Circle of Friends
Maeve Binchy
Binchy at her coziest, all friendship and first love and small-town Irish life in the '50s. Comfort reading that still has teeth.