“Back on Sept. 10, novelist Bill Roorbach interviewed his fellow novelist Richard Ford about his latest book, the short story collection ‘Sorry for Your Trouble,’ on a Zoom event hosted by the Portland Public Library. Ford, in East Boothbay, and Roorbach, in Scarborough, covered a lot of ground, sharing thoughts on the short story form, technique and process. ‘It’s one of the things you get to do when you write fiction, the sort that you do and the sort that I do,’ Ford told Roorbach: ‘We get to imagine what causes what.’ At one point Roorbach mentioned the Irish-British novelist Elizabeth Bowen and Ford averred that her ‘The House in Paris’ was ‘one of the greatest novels ever.’ That recommendation sent me to the bookshelf, to another Bowen novel, one my mother had recommended years ago, ‘The Death of the Heart,’ published in 1938. I am reading it slowly, savoring a narrative that moves between recording the mundane and delving into the human psyche. The writing is brilliantly observant, the language perfectly crafted. It will probably take another couple of months to finish it. I’m in no rush.” — CARL LITTLE, MOUNT DESERT
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