Among the lesser injustices, there is the failure of capitalism to produce the odd item that in my humble opinion would improve life in general, or mine in particular. I've written earlier about the Bialetti Elettrodomestici Macchina Per Pasta. It would be nice if someone brought chervil to my local farmers market. Such market failures don't measure up to the failure of the Soviet state to produce enough copies of the poetry of Osip Mandelstam to satisfy demand.
Which brings me to Penelope Unbound, a novel by Mary Morrissy, published last year by Banshee Press an independent Irish press. The premiss of the novel is simple: What if Norah Barnacle had grown tired of waiting for James Joyce at the train station in Trieste and had been taken home by a good samaritan? From this idea, Morrissy weaves a funny, but very poignant tale that deserves a much wider audience. In particular the novel deserves a U.S. publisher. John Banville wrote an ecstatic review in the Guardian, but this doesn't seem to have been appreciated in America. Why?
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