Men Beware Women

Book excerpt: Fiction. Malcolm has read so many English novels that Oxford feels as familiar as it does foreign when he arrives from New York to study Shakespeare in the intervals between crew practice. But all it takes is one drama student for life to shake loose his grasp of literature. Emma isn't the prettiest girl he's ever slept with, or the most well-read, but her mind most matches his. When she lands a part in a play Off-Off-Broadway and decamps to New York leaving no forwarding address, the irony that in a book would be artistic rankles in real life. Cast adrift, Malcolm miscalculates and breaks two ribs rowing. His Shakespeare tutor warns him not to let love get in the way of literature or at least not till they do the tragedies but as soon as term ends, Malcolm hops a plane to New York. Will he be able to steer his own course to the middle way his tutor's always touting? Or do happy endings only exist in books? "Gwen Thompson portrays Oxford dons, Upper East Side executives, and working-class English girls with the same breezy mastery, while reveling in the minutiae of Elizabethan drama, pub crawling, competitive rowing, and getting your heart broken. A thoroughly charming performance from a very talented young writer." Ralph Lombreglia"