On Reading On many occasions as I sat reading a book by some author whom I love and admire, I have fantasized writing a story, as it were, within the fabric of their cloth. This happens especially when I read Elizabeth Strout. She has a way of telling her story as though she and I are having tea together and she is simply telling me about things that she had been thinking about, memories that had come to her, or something that had recently struck her imagination. The tone is so comfortable and true that I, the reader, feel drawn in and taken along, without excitement or stress, to an understanding of the woman herself and of those of whom she is speaking. Her writing is always interesting and pertinent. It has an affect, on me at least, of opening me to my own thoughts and stories, things I think about, perhaps fear or hope for, people who have been parts of my life over these many decades, things that I have done, am happy about, or have regretted. Her non-judgemental, always in...