Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.
Jane SmileyIn his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.
Jane SmileyThe fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.
Jane Smiley'Ape House' is an ambitious novel in several ways, for which it is to be admired, and it is certainly an easy read, but because Gruen is not quite prepared for the philosophical implications of her subject, it is not as deeply involving emotionally or as interesting thematically as it could be.
Jane Smiley