2010/16: Magic for Beginners -- Kelly Link

Magic for Beginners -- Kelly Link

"I want [the story] to be about good and evil and true love, and it should also be funny. No talking animals. Not too much fooling around with the narrative structure. The ending should be happy but still realistic, believable, you know; and there shouldn't be a moral although we should be able to think back later and have some sort of revelation." (p. 248)

( non-spoilery review )

2010/17: An Experiment in Love -- Hilary Mantel

An Experiment in Love -- Hilary Mantel

...if I hurry I will lose the thread; or the narrative will be like knitting done in a bad temper. The tension goes wrong; you come back later, measure your work and find that it hasn't grown as you'd imagined. Then you must unravel it, row by row, resenting each slick twist and pull that undoes, so easily, what you laboured over; and when you work again you must do it with the used wool, every kink in it reminding you of your failure.
Our autobiographies are similar, I think; I mean the unwritten volumes, the stories for an audience of one. This account we give to ourselves of our life -- the shape changes moment by moment. We pick up the thread and we use it once, then we use it again, in a more complex form, in a more useful garment, one that conforms more to fashion and our current shape. (p.50)

( slightly spoilery review )