The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald Page B

that they make people see fantastic literary adventures as obligations.
    You can have the names of some of my American favorites in any case, so long as you promise you won’t feel obliged to read them.
    Paul Auster. I prefer
The Brooklyn Follies
to his
New York Trilogy
, even if it’s blasphemy to say so.
    I reread
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald this summer. I read it as a ‘classic’ when I was young and I never appreciated it to the extent it deserves until now. I’m afraid that my real favorites are reserved for the women though. Maybe I’m just biased.
    I don’t think any book has moved me as deeply as Toni Morrison’s
Beloved
did, and there’s no author I admire more than Joyce Carol Oates. I think the only reason she hasn’t won the Nobel Prize (what are you lot playing at over there? can’t you have a word with them?) is that she writes too much. Productivity like hers just overwhelms the male critics’ sense of self – she writes more quickly than they can critique her. How are you supposed to be able to review a new work if you can’t manage to read fifty other books by her first?
    Best,
    Amy

A Bookshop in their Midst
    â€˜ YOUR FATHER AND I have talked about this, and we think that it’s time for you to come home.’
    â€˜Home?’ Sara said. She couldn’t go back now. She’d just learned how to use the gas stove, for God’s sake.
    â€˜We feel it’s for the best.’
    Her parents used ‘we’ when they wanted to present a united front at the same time as emphasising that they outnumbered her.
    â€˜Why?’ Sara said.
    â€˜You’ve been there quite long enough. We understand that you wanted to meet that Amy woman, and now you have.’
    Sara sighed. She would have to tell them. ‘About that –’ she began, but her mother interrupted her.
    â€˜We’re not even sure it’s
polite
to stay any longer. I’m sure she says it’s all right, but really, what kind of person lets a perfect stranger stay with them for weeks? When Per and Gunilla –’
    â€˜Who?’ Sara asked, not that she cared particularly. Her mother’s conversations were always full of people Sara didn’t know.
    Her mother happily ignored her. ‘When Per and Gunilla had American relatives coming for a visit they only stayed for two days. And they stayed in a hotel! And they were related. Well, distantly at least. I’m sure Amy never dreamed that you would stay for so long.’
    â€˜Amy is dead,’ said Sara.
    For the first time in her life, she left her mother speechless. The silence stretched out between them for so long that Sara eventually said: ‘Hello?’ in case her mother had actually hung up on her.
    â€˜Dead?’ said her mother. Sara heard her passing this crucial information on to her dad, despite the fact that he must have already heard as he was suddenly talking animatedly in the background. Her father was seldom bothered about what Sara did, but when he did care, he made his opinions known. Her mother could be relentless and persistent, no matter how small the issue; her father could be loud, but only on special occasions. This was one obviously.
    â€˜But where are you staying?’ her mother asked.
    â€˜In Amy’s house.’
    More silence. More discussions in the background. ‘That settles it, then,’ Sara heard her father saying, but her mother still seemed to be focusing on the practical side of things.
    â€˜But how can you be staying there? Who gave you permission?’
    â€˜It was a … collective decision.’
    Her father had apparently managed to take control of the phone, because his voice suddenly boomed in Sara’s ear. ‘This is ridiculous! Is it even legal?’
    â€˜Wait a minute,’ her mother said. ‘When did she die? And, well,
how
?’
    â€˜This is not something you should be involved