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Laura McNeal

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Born
The United States
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Influences
Penelope Fitzgerald, Jane Gardam, Hilary Mantel, William Trevor, Georg ...more

Member Since
October 2010


Living since 1983 (the year I first read Thomas Hardy) in the haunted mansion of Victorian literature.

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Laura McNeal Everything inspires me to write. It's a pre-existing condition. The most crippling and yet most motivating activity is, of course, to read a great nov…moreEverything inspires me to write. It's a pre-existing condition. The most crippling and yet most motivating activity is, of course, to read a great novel by someone else, one that makes writing a great novel seem both an impossible thing to do and the only thing I ever want to do.(less)
Laura McNeal One ticket to I Capture the Castle, please. Ticket should include being locked in the keep by my children, who send food to me in a basket, the way th…moreOne ticket to I Capture the Castle, please. Ticket should include being locked in the keep by my children, who send food to me in a basket, the way they did with their father in the book. I have to stay there until I finish my novel.(less)
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More books by Laura McNeal…

Ambassadors

A long time ago, when I was 21, Tobias Wolff asked me a question. "Do you feel like you have to be an ambassador for your faith in your writing?"

This was at Syracuse University, and we were in his office in the Hall of Languages, an ornate stone castle of a building that stood at the top of a hill I climbed every day like a pilgrim.  Toby's office, on the fifth floor, was fittingly grand, full of Read more of this blog post »
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Published on July 14, 2018 00:00

Laura’s Recent Updates

Laura McNeal rated a book it was amazing
The Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam
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No one tells a more vivid fairy godmother (or godfather) story than Jane Gardam. She once again weaves the strands of friendship, filial obligation, resentment, and romance into a tale with many surprises in it, and yet the surprises are always so ri ...more
Laura McNeal is finished with The Flight of the Maidens: No one tells a more vivid fairy godmother (or godfather) story like Jane Gardam. She once again weaves the strands of friendship, filial obligation, and romance into a tale with many surprises in it, and yet the surprises are always so richly detailed—and richly deserved—that you believe them utterly. Whoever the real Lieselotte is, I wish for her a benefactor like this one, and a journey with the same outcome.
The Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam
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The Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam
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Straight Man by Richard Russo
Straight Man
by Richard Russo (Goodreads Author)
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My husband says Russo is our Dickens, and I said that's IMPOSSIBLE! No one can be Dickens! But now I think he might be right, unless Russo is really our Thackeray. The satire, the wit, the humor, the irony, the bitterness, the compassion, the rue. Th ...more
Laura McNeal rated a book it was amazing
Landslide by Susan Conley
Landslide
by Susan Conley (Goodreads Author)
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Absolutely nails the feeling of motherhood with male teens, especially the late-night insomniac worry cycle between thinking that your teenager is in real, actual, fatal peril that will end in catastrophe, and thinking the teenagers (and calmer relat ...more
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Stop Here, This is the Place by Susan Conley
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Elsey Come Home by Susan Conley
Elsey Come Home
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Paris Was the Place by Susan Conley
Paris Was the Place
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The Foremost Good Fortune by Susan Conley
The Foremost Good Fortune
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Quotes by Laura McNeal  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Amiel was looking at me with the kind of interest that made my mouth dry up. I was Braille and his eyes were fingers.”
Laura McNeal, Dark Water

“Tu' eres de dos mundos."
He was wrong, of course. You can only belong to one world at a time.”
Laura McNeal, Dark Water

“Inside the house, near the hearth, Amiel had built a sort of fire pit with rocks. It was a safer place to cook than most campsites, really, because there was concrete all around, and I longed to be there when he had the fire going, when we could be cowgirl and cowboy and pretend we weren't a few miles from two million people.”
Laura McNeal, Dark Water

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What should we read for November? We are getting down to the wire! Are we missing the boat?

 
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More...
“A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.”
G.K. Chesterton, Robert Browning

“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”
Anton Chekhov, Gooseberries and Other Stories

“It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.”
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.”
Roland Barthes

“I probably reread novels more often than I read new ones. The novel form is made for rereading. Novels are by their nature too long, too baggy, too full of things – you can't hold them completely in your mind. This isn't a flaw – it's part of the novel's richness: its length, multiplicity of aspects, and shapelessness resemble the length and shapelessness of life itself. By the time you reach the end of the novel you will have forgotten the beginning and much of what happens in between: not the main outlines but the fine work, the detail and the music of the sentences – the particular words, through which the novel has its life. You think you know a novel so well that there must be nothing left in it to discover but the last time I reread Emma I found a little shepherd boy, brought into the parlour to sing for Harriet when she's staying with the Martin family. I'm sure he was never in the book before.”
Tessa Hadley

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A book club for parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles to come together and share what books they and their children have enjoyed. Will aim to have t ...more
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