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Many thanks to Kathy for inviting me to write my first ever guest post and to my husband for encouraging me to follow through. I am grateful for this opportunity and proud to have done it. It feels especially lovely for this piece to have appeared on Thanksgiving. Like Margaret Renkl’s column for the New York Times, Kathy’s Substack brings food for thought every week. I am in awe of the discipline and talent it takes to produce such rich work as this.

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Thank YOU, Diane! Your post was perfect, and I love that you gave everyone a question to think about, too. (Apologies if I made it sound like my question in the edit--it was yours!!) I've been trying to think about the last book that made me cry. It was probably Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

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I just finished Foster by Claire Keegan it evoked the same feelings as Stoner by John Williams but more acutely.

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LOVE that story!

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A writer I'm grateful to for making me cry is Cormac McCarthy. The ending of The Road undid me.

I just finished I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell and it was brilliant. It didn't quite make me cry, but I got close. I'm looking forward to trying her fiction now.

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The Road is in my big TBR pile. But do I want to be undone?

We've just been commenting on Maggie O'Farrell's brilliance in another recent post.

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It is definitely dark but I'm biased and would say yes! (It's in my top 10)

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Wow, that's a convincing endorsement!

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