[book-a-day advent to thanksgiving: 9 days left]

i love love love this book.

(so i’ve loved loved loved all the books this month. but if i was stranded on a desert island and i was feeling particularly girly and i just needed a romance, i would smuggle this book under my shirt, along with rope, matches, and other such surviverly things — plus some gerard manley hopkins and a little bit of ee cummings. but now i’m getting greedy.)

cassandra mortmain is one of the most compelling and intoxicating narrators out of the mid-twentieth century. her first line is perhaps the best around,

i write this sitting in the kitchen sink. that is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which i have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy.

the characters are delightful. the plot unpredictable. the crushes spine-tingling. the outcome unexpected. the writing fresh and invigorating. i cannot love this book enough. just writing about it makes me want to read it again …
(is this the fifth or sixth time … ?)