![]() He’s got his dark denim jeans on, and his hat is low on his head. I barely get a few steps out of the truck and I see Cole walking out of the barn. Every time I’m here, it takes my breath away. I pull into his driveway and spot his truck sitting next to the barn. Why does the Microwave Make the Food Hot but Not the Plate? I know I’m not going to be able to look at him without thinking about what he did to me the other night. The whole way over to his house, I have to fan myself, wondering how it’s going to be when I look into his face. I apply some mascara and lip gloss and then brush my hair until it shines. I put on my new jeans and a V-neck T-shirt. I’ve been waiting to hear something – anything – from Cole, and by the morning of the third day, I know I need to go and talk to him. ![]() The whole time, I’ve had my phone glued to my hand. I tried to make sure I only spent the money on the things we had to have, but I did splurge while I was in town and bought myself a new pair of jeans, blouse, and even a dress. ![]() I paid off the balance I owed at the feedlot, I hired a crew to start on the barn’s roof next week, and I went into Jasper and bought a herd of cows, hired another ranch hand, and found a nurse for my father. I went to the bank and paid off the mortgage my dad had taken out. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() A grieving widow, offended by one of Ruth’s novels, pronounces a curse on her. ![]() Ted copes by seducing younger (often married) women Marion, by bearing a daughter (Ruth) whom she’ll later abandon following her affair with 16-year-old Eddie O’Hare, a prep-school student hired by Ted as a “writer’s assistant.” Later sections, set in 19, dwell melodramatically on Ruth’s painstaking progress toward romantic happiness (including a European book tour that involves her with a prostitutes’-rights organization) and the lingering effects of their adolescent affair on Eddie, who’s now a middle-aged novelist and “perpetual visiting writer-in-residence” with a lifelong passion for older women. Though it’s primarily the story of successful novelist Ruth Cole, the lengthy foreground, set in Sagaponack, Long Island, in 1958, is dominated by Ruth’s parents, Ted and Marion, both minor novelists (though Ted later becomes rich and famous as a writer and illustrator of children’s stories), both mourning the deaths of their two teenaged sons in an automobile accident. Irving’s latest LBM (Loose Baggy Monster, that is), which portrays with seriocomic gusto the literary life and its impact on both writers and their families, is simultaneously one of his most intriguing books and one of his most self-indulgent and flaccid. ![]() ![]() ![]() He also must make friends with his new teammates, Shitty (no one knows his real name) the duo Holster and Ransom Jack, the captain and son of a hockey legend, who has a lot to prove Lardo, the diminutive female team manager and Coach Hall. His hobbies include vlogging and baking pies, and although he played hockey in high school, he is terrified of getting checked. ![]() Bitty is a former competitive ice-skating junior champion from a small town in Georgia, who attends Samwell University in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship. The webcomic runs for all four years of Bitty’s time at university the first volume contains the first half of the series (freshman and sophomore years), with the second volume* to cover the other half of the series (junior and senior years). Written and illustrated by Ngozi Ukazu, the coming-of-age story follows freshman Eric “Bitty” Bittle as he navigates the college hockey landscape and comes to terms with his identity as a young gay man. Check, Please: #Hockey (2018) is the first of two published volumes of a long-running sports webcomic by the same name that started in 2013. ![]() |