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Andrée’s assumption in The Inseparables, that books were enough for Sylvie, has the force of a lover’s complaint. Andrée is the most important person in Sylvie’s life at that point and her opinion matters. Being poised must attract as many people as it puts off, but when I’m taken with someone, the…

[...] “I was a madly gay little girl,” she writes, though what I noticed most in her description of her childhood wasn’t her happiness but her confidence. She had appalling handwriting (Sartre used to complain about it) and always “made a mess of hems,” but “as soon as I was able to think for mysel…

But I was learning. I held a party for my summer birthday: I warmed pizza and chilled rosé and turned the patio into a jungly dance floor, going so late that the neighbors behind started yelling. We had Easter Sunday lunch around my dining table, my little brother cooking lamb, my father sneaking a…

When I told my old boss I was getting divorced, she said: “Well, you did get married in a very desultory way.” I puzzled over the comment for a long time, but she had hit on something. I was missing joy, excitement, fun. It’s good to be sensible when you are investing your pension, but if desultory…

I used to want desperately to be a “proper” critic, to be taken seriously, to have a full command of history and theory, but I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want to “admire” writing for its erudition, I want to be changed by it. I want to know what it’s like to be someone else. I want to have th…