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By Stuart Miller Globe Correspondent,Updated April 29, 2021, 11:43 a.m.
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ALE+ALE for The Boston Globe
In Maggie Shipsteadâs first two novels, âSeating Arrangementsâ and âAstonish Me,â she kept the lens narrow and filled her cloistered world with characters who often scanned as unlikable or unsympathetic. Yet Shipsteadâs narrative skill compelled readers along, as when she derided one of the numerous snooty WASPs populating her debut as someone who âhad been a dour Young Republican in his teens and in his twenties applied himself to his finance job and to a methodical investigation of eligible women that ultimately yielded a female mirror image who fused with him in a marriage as cold and perfect as the bond between two adjacent blocks in an igloo.â