en-US Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:47 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg AuthorBlogPost25862313 Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:47 -0700 /author_blog_posts/25862313-maggie-stiefvater-s-2025-events-appearances-details-tips Review7637127970 Sun, 08 Jun 2025 04:39:21 -0700 /review/show/7637127970 Maggie gave 5 stars to Lucy by the Sea (Amgash #4) by Elizabeth Strout
bookshelves: adult
This was a tough one to read: set in turbulent 2020, a time I wasn't sure I was ready to read about yet, it's essentially a novel about the sometimes dangerous and often flawed coping mechanisms we deployed during lockdown, and because of our narrator Lucy's seemingly all-inclusive and detailed voice, the novel is deceptively straightforward. When I paged through the GR reviews of this one, I wasn't surprised to see a lot of readers take her at face value; several noted it must be the most autobiographical of Strout's. It won a Pulitzer, though, so I knew going in that it couldn't be a breezy piece of autofiction.

This is a novel I wouldn't have enjoyed at all when I was a different, younger reader, because I, too, would have been too inside Lucy's perspective to see that this wasn't merely a confessional. A really tidy example of this is a moment highlighted by several reviews here, as Lucy finds out her daughter is considering an affair. When Lucy assumes it is with a man, the daughter tells Lucy that she's backward to assume it's a man in this day and age (but it is a man, after all). Some readers complained that this was Strout putting a lecture to the reader in the mouth of a character, telling us to be more open-minded, and ten years ago, perhaps I would have thought so too, who knows. But it seems obvious to me now that this moment, and many others like it, are about Lucy, who prided herself on her liberal ideals, feeling confronted again and again by her uncertainty of how to navigate them in a world that needs big, practical moves. The daughters and several side characters all stand in as proxies for various sections of America who have long felt unheard and don't think Lucy understands them (and she often doesn't).

Lucy can be unlikeable and flawed, but she, too, is a proxy for another type of American, one that Strout is more knowledgeable about, and thus one who she draws with more complexity, fondness, and harshness.

The final page of the novel is really quite brilliant as Lucy suddenly understands that she's been living her own coping mechanism, one that was especially hidden to her since she felt she was performing such close self-examination. Her revelation is the same as America's. It's heartbreaking.

Recommended, but with caveats: Because of the aesthetics and readability, it seems like Anne of Green Gables for adults, but I wouldn't pick it up when I'm in the mood for immersive, literary family fiction (My Brilliant Friend or Fresh Water for Flowers are better choices for that). Read it as a spare, chilly think piece disguised with gorgeous Maine coastline and cottagecore, and you'll have a better time. ]]> UserStatus1076070027 Sat, 07 Jun 2025 11:16:41 -0700 Maggie Stiefvater added a status update.
Maggie wrote: THE LISTENERS is out everywhere that books can be found in both print and audio! It's one of the best-reviewed books of the week, according to LitHub: ]]> Review7634718467 Sat, 07 Jun 2025 06:16:58 -0700 /review/show/7634718467 Maggie gave 5 stars to Ties (Paperback) by Domenico Starnone
bookshelves: recommended, adult
A tiny, impeccable, closely-observed snapshot of three generations of Italians being awful to each other. ]]> Review7634694149 Sat, 07 Jun 2025 06:02:58 -0700 /review/show/7634694149 Maggie gave 5 stars to Letters To A Young Doctor (Harvest Book) by Richard Selzer
bookshelves: recommended, adult, nonfiction
Wise, fallible, excessive, hyperbolic, passionate, florid, amusing, touching, overwrought, heart-breaking, metaphorical, affirming. This set of essays (that I believe is still required reading for many medical programs) feels a bit like James Herriot for the physician set.

The last third goes a bit off the rails for me—in particular, there was one called "Imposter" that reminded me acutely of two recent reads that rubbed me wrong for the same reason, His Name was Death and A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph, both full of flowery passages about an old and very period form of Christianity.

But in the first half in particular, there are essays I'll be thinking about for a very, very long time. Absolute stunners of emotional and authorial craft.

]]> Review7605646809 Tue, 27 May 2025 19:14:28 -0700 /review/show/7605646809 Maggie has read His Name was Death (Paperback) by Rafael Bernal
bookshelves: adult
The mosquitos this novel are far more [spoilers removed]almost unbelievably, that is a spoiler.
]]> ReadStatus9361617930 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 02:45:52 -0700 /review/show/7525201810 Maggie has read Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
]]> ReadStatus9292737929 Thu, 10 Apr 2025 04:47:57 -0700 /review/show/7477460509 Maggie has read The Trespasser by Tana French
]]> Review7455986540 Wed, 02 Apr 2025 03:30:28 -0700 /review/show/7455986540 Maggie gave 5 stars to Oh William! (Amgash, #3) by Elizabeth Strout
bookshelves: recommended, adult
When I was reading this novel, I thought, about seventy times: wow, I'm really enjoying this, but I don't know that I would have twenty years ago, when I was a different sort of reader.

At a certain point, I started feeling a little annoyed that I couldn't go back and get ahold of 23-year-old me to find out if it was true. Have I changed or do I *think* I've changed, and is the thinking of changing as good as doing?

This is what this novel is about.

Yes, sure, it's also about a woman who is comforting her ex-husband after a bunch of shocking Life Events, capital L, capital E, but it's also just about what it means to live a recursive, cumulative life (this is a thing I've already been thinking about, ever since starting to write the THE LISTENERS—no, probably back when I was writing the Dreamer Trilogy, too, if I think about what Declan Lynch became in that). The novel itself is short and the forward motion is slight, but Strout has packed two generations of living into it in a way that feels personal and immediate. Life has no easy answers and the book knows it; it's a sad and joyful little thing. The characters are wonderfully real.

23-year-old Maggie, call me, let me know what you think of it. ]]> CommunityAnswer16758047 Wed, 12 Mar 2025 06:20:32 -0700