story: “To Reach Japan”
author: Alice Munro
year: 2012
where: Starbucks, Festival City
note: I picked up this book for only 39 dirhams–Dear Life–and the writing is so good, so much denser than what I’ve been reading, books by younger contemporary female writers, mostly. Her style (as well as the font) reminds me of the Maeve Binchy books of my childhood.
a line: “In the decade that they had already entered but that she at least had not taken much notice of, there was going to be a lot of attention paid to this sort of thing. Being there was to mean something it didn’t use to mean.”
theme(s): Adultery, feminism, marriage, writing life, mothers and daughters, trains