It bothered me because it wasn’t the yarn I was spinning. There must be a contract between us, storyteller and listener: I will do the work of telling the tale as long as you do the work of believing in it. We all must agree to believe that Mr. Darcy is rich, or Pride and Prejudice falls apart. We have to agree that Owen Meany is tiny, that Jane Marple is knitting in a small village, that hobbits live in shires, and that Duchess Goldblatt is a gorgeous elderly woman in love with the world and everyone in it.
