Friendship Keeps You Human In 'Rules For Visiting'
Jessica Francis Kane's new novel follows a prickly, 40-something gardener who — inspired by the friendless fate of Beowulf's monstrous Grendel — decides to reconnect with four of her oldest friends.
It's been a minute since I've read a book whose narrator I didn't like at first. Maybe it's because some part of me, the perfectionist hungry to be loved and eager to be accepted, shies away from protagonists who don't care about such things. Maybe I just haven't been reading many narratives told in first person recently. Probably, it's a mix of both. The night before I write this, a friend asked me to list what about me could possibly be unlikeable,, where she suggests that "unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don't dare be so alive."
