Earlier this year James at New Edition Bookshop suggested William Maxwell to me. So I read The Folded Leaf, a college novel set in 1920s Chicago. I now love it as much as Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding. After The Folded Leaf I needed more Maxwell so I went back to the bookshop and bought Time Will Darken It and The Chateau. In The Chateau, a young American couple, Harold and Barbara, are holidaying in post war France:

Thursday was a nice day. The sun shone, it was warm, and Harold and Barbara spent the entire afternoon on the bank of the river, in their bathing suits. When they got home they found a scene out ofAnna Karenina. Mme Bonenfant, Mme Viénot, Mme Cestre, and Thérèse were sitting under the Lebanon cedar, to the right of the terrace, with their chairs facing an enormous burlap bag, which they kept reaching into. They were shelling peas for canning.