More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
And here he was, less than a year later, married to this wise and lovely woman, with a new life and a new novel that carried not the slightest taint of compromise in its conception, looking ahead to every variety of fulfillment.
Anna is Rose
just because he’d found a story and crafted it into a fine and compelling narrative, precisely as writers had always done!
No, these people were not going to fuck with him any longer. Or if they did, he was going to fuck with them right back.
“I only ever heard her talk about her mother. But of course, that horrible thing with her mom had just happened, right before she got here. Probably that was the only thing on her mind.” She shook her head. “So horrible.”
Rose is Dianna
“Wait,” said Jake. “How old was she, would you say, when she was living here?”
That’s what happens when you learn about people from a novel—somebody else’s or your own, just the same.
Truth being stranger than fiction was, itself, a truth universally acknowledged, but if that was true why did we always fight so hard against it? A mother and daughter, viciously entwined—that was everyday life in more families than not.
It was a plot to kill for,
In the last of the light he took a photograph of the grave and sent it to his wife, with only the corrected name of the occupant attached. More would have to wait until he got home, for a face-to-face conversation.
it occurred to him that this strangest of stories warranted a full retelling, and this time no longer as fiction.
he’d still be able to control the narrative as he soul-searched and pondered the deep questions about what fiction was and how it got made, on behalf of every one of his fellow novelists and short story writers!
Crib’s second telling would be a meta-narrative, destined to vindicate every writer and resonate with every reader, and telling it would render him brave and bold as an artist. Besides, what was the point of being
PG?
Do you want more soup?”
"Arsenic and Old Lace"
What self-respecting writer doesn’t know the plot of Housekeeping? Fingerbone, Idaho!
And then you had to start running around like Lord Peter Wimsey.
And he knew my daughter, don’t forget that. He knew what a bitch she was.” It reminded Jake of something, that word. But he couldn’t think what.
as they announced the City Arts lecture. That was my plot,
why should I have to actually marry someone who stole from me, just to get back what was already mine? There’s a subject for a novel, isn’t it?
Sentences: his last, and not even chosen by him, or arranged by him, or vetted by him. It was nearly the worst thing of all.
your petty feuds and your fifty shades of narcissism?
there were no details, really. It was an empty accusation, but in Jake’s world even the accusation felt ruinous.
But he did tell two people
“I’ve always thought so. And I’ve had some time now to really think deeply about what I want from my life, and how I want to live it. It’s a little embarrassing under the circumstances, but deep down I realized that what I truly want to do is write.”
"Gone Girl"
Everyone has a unique voice and a story nobody else can tell. And anybody can be a writer.”
