The Woman in the Library

by Sulari Gentill

I know the repeated rejections are a rite of passage, Hannah, but, honestly, it hurts. I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this business. It must be wonderful to be at that stage where you’ve paid your dues, where you know that whatever you write now, it will at least be seriously considered. This stage just feels like a ritual humiliation.

beautiful face full of concern and sympathy, and I giggle. And suddenly I’m laughing helplessly, though it’s not that funny. Marigold regards me quizzically and then she too laughs,

The reality is, I suppose, that I am a straight white man with no diversity or disadvantage to offer as a salve for the fashionable collective guilt that rules publishing. I understand that popular correctness demands that men like me be denied to compensate for all the years in which we were given too much. I just wish I’d had a chance to enjoy a little of that privilege before it became a liability. Anyway, she said no. So there we are.

“Even progressive prisons have their own societal rules, their own hierarchy. And men in prison are not necessarily fair or reasonable.”

Let’s not pretend. And being in love is a bit like finding God. You start to act on blind faith. Let me be the voice of reality before you find yourself in Jonestown.”