This is because the narrative thread often vanishes for pages at a time. Now, having found Miss MacIntosh, My Darling and read it, I believe that the bonbon approach is a good one, but it would still be an advantage to have gone through it normally the first time, in other words, in stretches. Too rich for a repast, it is better savored, they say, like a bedside dish of candy, one bite-sized bonbon at a time.” “ven Miss Young’s most ardent admirers … concede that the book, variously described as “a mammoth epic,” “a massive fable” and “a work of stunning magnitude and beauty” … is rather much to take in a single season. “Anyone who has not heard of Miss Young, nor read her magnum opus, “Miss MacIntosh, My Darling,” need not feel ashamed,” stated the obituary in the New York Times when Young died in 1995 at the age of 87. Marguerite Young took 18 years to finish her book, and when it came out in 1965 one critic called it his most hated publication of the year. The illustration at Dalkey Archive Press, the agent of Miss MacIntosh‘s latest republishing, showed an orange-brown cover with a knobbled texture: not an interesting thing to look at, but inside it was supposed to be either brilliant or horrible depending on the reader. Had it been released in Australia? Not everything is, as I found when I tried to track down Greer Gilman’s Moonwise. I spent a long time searching for Miss MacIntosh in secondhand book stores, never seriously expecting to find it. The name of his book was Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, and it was 1,198 pages long … It had the advantage of being plotless, as far as he could tell, but invariably interesting, so he could dip into it at random.

When Macon Leary of Anne Tyler’s Accidental Tourist wants to protect himself from the friendliness of other passengers on aeroplanes, he takes out a novel.

Miss mackintosh my darling