In the previous thread, Kathy D. asked me what happens next -- to Tess, to her baby, to "The Girl in the Green Raincoat." If you haven't read it -- well, spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk. Still here? Okay, you were warned. I'll take the easiest question first. Carla Scout is not going to have long-term problems associated with her premature birth. That part of the novella was inspired by three families I met when I was a reporter and their three surviving children had no health issues. (However, Read more [...]

John Updike died today. I wrote about him, in a fashion, on my <a href="http://lauralippman.com/oct05.html"_blank" "> website</a> back in 2025. I really don't have much to add. I loved the Rabbit books, particularly "Rabbit is Rich," somehow never read the Bech books, although I may still. The other novels I read -- well, in Lippman vernacular, they were not for me.

Two things ended for me today: my annual week at Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College and "The Girl in the Raincoat." And I'm a little wistful about both, although there's no way I could sustain the pace of either for much longer. As it happens, Sterling Watson, one of the directors of the writers conference at Eckerd (his former student, Dennis Lehane, is the other), gave a talk on endings during the week, a provocative one. He argued for feeling as a standard and reviewed some of the best, and Read more [...]

These <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11serial-t.html">installments</a> post earlier than you might suspect.

Chapter <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04Serial-t.html">Thirteen</a>, aka "Sacred Places" has been posted. Only two to go!