How did I live without William Maxwell’s writing in my life. It’s fantastic, not a letter out of place. 

Actually I’ll tell you how. When I was younger, I would have been too cynical and too angry to have liked Maxwell’s style. These stories spanning 50 years of writing are wise and funny, sad and wistful, brutal and tender blows to the heart. He writes tragically gorgeous paragraphs about grief, age and death in a way a younger, less experienced, less wrinkly me just would not have appreciated. 

But if you have lost loved ones or ever been in love or are finding yourself softening in these recent years, as I physically and emotionally am, then you will find something to hold here. And you will likely be held as well. #2025books