Susan Kietzman is the author of Every Other Wednesday, The Summer Cottage, A Changing Marriage, and The Good Life.Her new novel is It Started in June.
Recently I asked Kietzman about what she was reading. Her reply:
I read Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster several years ago, and I have no idea why it has taken me so long to circle back to the work of such an insightful and witty author. The Odds (A Love Story) is about Marion and Art Fowler, who find themselves in a desperate financial situation and on the brink of divorce after thirty years of marriage. Against their better judgment, they drain their bank account and take a bus to Niagara Falls – in a last ditch effort at rekindling their loveVisit Susan Kietzman's website.(well, for Art anyway) and winning enough money at the casino to move them out of the red and into the black.
The Odds, like The Lobster, is a look at how regular people act in irregular times. The Lobster details the final night of operation of a Red Lobster restaurant. And The Odds zeroes in on how a couple can rationalize gambling everything they have via the whim of a roulette wheel. In both stories, no matter what happens, tomorrow promises to look nothing like today. Moments like those described in both The Lobster and The Odds reveal that what defines a person is not what he or she does in everyday life, but rather who they become when the world they have come to depend on no longer matters.
The Page 69 Test: It Started in June.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
