Last weekend, I invented a pie. I wanted a summer pie, a cold pie, a creamy pie, a citrus pie– something that would taste good in the dog days of August. I don’t like lemon meringue pie– meringue to me is too unsatisfying, a cloud of sugar-sweet nothing similar to cotton candy, and the meringue …
Author: Meredith McCaskey
A Novel’s Story, Part 3
Nearly two years ago, I was talking on the phone with my older sister Emily, who lives in Colorado. Somehow the topic of my long-abandoned novel came up. I confessed to her that even though I was 29 and ought to have long-ago outgrown the story and characters that had originated in my 12-year-old brain, …
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
When I say that a book is a "favorite" of mine, what I mean is that I have read it multiple times, always enjoying it as much or even more than the previous time, and I know that I will read it again in the future. Each time I read it I find something fresh …
Little Fires Everywhere
The story is the battle between suburbia and bohemianism, and the deck is stacked. It’s obvious almost from the beginning that suburbia is going to lose, and that we are meant to rejoice in its downfall. And while I think that a thoughtful critique of suburbia is warranted and valuable, the heavy-handedness, almost preachiness, of …
The Wind and the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
... suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before– this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held …
Continue reading The Wind and the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
Emma, by Jane Austen
I don't know how many times I have read/listened to Emma. I am sure that it is more than all the rest of Austen's novels put together, and that is not because I haven't read and re-read the others multiples times, it is simply because much as I might love and/or admire them, Emma remains the …
A Novel’s Story, Part 2
The novel finished on my 13th birthday evolved with me throughout my teens. I would edit it furiously for months on end, be positive that I was finished with it, stuff it away for months or a year, and then get it out and start working on it again. I wrote other things: journals, essays …
A Novel’s Story- Part 1
Once upon a time I was twelve years old and I started writing a novel. This wasn't the first time. I was ambitious from age six, and I had notebooks stuffed full of my literary attempts– attempts that usually fizzled out after a chapter, or even after I'd made a detailed list of the characters, …
Meredith Lynn McCaskey 