Gentlemen and Players

I'm almost done reading Gentlemen and Players, by Joanne Harris and I didn't realize that she was the author of Chocolat. G and P is a delicious revenge story, but so far I have no notion of what the specific act is that is being avenged. I do know that a lifetime of horrible injustice and misunderstanding is the subject of vendetta (cosmic justice) and for this, two characters are intertwined and become narrators, victims and perpetrators, all at once. The climax is yet to come. I can't wait.

I have also begun Jen Lancaster's Bitter is the New Black and I find myself strangely sympathetic to Jen, who is nothing like me, except in her compulsive aggressive perfectionism, judgmentalism, narcissism, antisocialism and neologism.

I've been trying to read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, highly recommended by CG, whose recommends are always firstrate and challenging. This one is too, especially since it's about the lives of children and don't let it fool you and make you think it's about bioethics or apocalyptic endtimes or somesuch. It takes your lungs and squeezes them hard and you forget to breathe while you are reading just like you did when you read Cat's Eye and The Handmaid's Tale. "How were we to know we were happy?"