Things to Come and Go

By Bette Howland

‘Reminiscent of Edna O’Brien, with shades too of Jean Rhys.’ – The Irish Times

Things to Come and Go showcases the incomparable talent of Bette Howland in three novellas of stunning power, beauty, and sustaining humour.

‘Birds of a Feather’ is a daughter’s story of her extended, first-generation family, the ‘big, brassy yak-yakking Abarbanels’. Esti, a merciless, astute observer, recalls growing up amid (the confusions and difficulties of) their history, quarrels, judgements, noisy love and inescapable bonds of blood.

In ‘The Old Wheeze’ a single mother in her twenties returns to her sunless apartment after a date at the ballet. Shifting between four viewpoints – the young woman, the older professor who took her out, her son, and her son’s babysitter – the story masterfully captures the impossibility of liberating ourselves from the self.

In ‘The Life You Gave Me’, a woman at the midpoint of life is called to her father’s sickbed. A lament for all that is forever unsaid and unsayable, the story is ‘an anguished meditation on growing up, growing old and being left behind, a complaint against time.’ (The New York Times)

First published in 1984, Things to Come and Go, Bette Howland’s final book, is a collection of haunting urgency about arrivals and departures, and the private, insoluble dramas in the lives of three women.

With an introduction by Rumaan Alam, bestselling author of Leave the World Behind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781529035902

Bette Howland

Bette Howland (1937-2017) was the author of three books: W-3, Blue in Chicago, and Things to Come and Go. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984, after which though she continued writing she would not publish another book. Near the end of her life, her stories found new readers when a portfolio of her work appeared in a special issue of A Public Space magazine exploring a generation of women writers, their lifetimes of work, and questions of anonymity and public attention in art.

Reviews for Things to Come and Go

[nivramkoorb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a long lost book that was rediscovered. It consists of 3 novellas and though it dealt with interesting topics, the style was very slow and jumbled. I did enjoy that she took very seemingly mundane lives and allowed the reader to see that the inward life how much more complexity than what was revealed to the outside world. Not a long book so it is not a large investment in time. Worth a try