I like Penelope Fitzgerald because she started writing when she was a widow. After a difficult, frequently impoverished life, she finally found the space and time to write and seemed to know exactly the parts of it that mattered.
I’ve also been turning to the stories in The Visiting Privilege by the hilarious and legendary Joy Williams, who said of the short story, “It is not a form that gives itself to consolation.”
I have yet to crack open Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend, but that’s next.