Dancing with Myself: Women's Novels

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5. I no longer want to read about anything sad. Anything violent, anything disturbing, anything like that. No funerals at the end, though there can be some in the middle. If there must be deaths, let there be resurrections, or at least a Heaven so we know where we are. Depression and squalor are for those under twenty-five, they can take it, they even like it, they still have enough time left. But real life is bad for you, hold it in your hand long enough and you'll get pimples and become feeble-minded. You'll go blind.
I want happiness, guaranteed, joy all around, covers with nurses on them or brides, intelligent girls but not too intelligent, with regular teeth and pluck and both breasts the same size and no excess facial hair, someone you can depend on to know where the bandages are and to turn the hero, that potential rake and killer, into a well-groomed country gentleman with clean fingernails and the right vocabulary. Always, he has to say, Forever. I no longer want to read books that don't end with the word forever. I want to be stroked between the eyes, one way only,

Margaret Atwood's Women's Novels from the collection Good Bones and Simple Murders.

Oh just because. Maybe because I'm going to Canada next week Maybe because I grok Margaret Atwood. We go way back, Margaret and I, way back.

I don't expect others to understand, just to accept.