The Lone Pilgrim

Praise

“Colwin’s book is itself a love affair…. Love, Miss Colwin reminds us, involves an immense amount of trouble.” —The New York Times

“Because of Laurie Colwin’s detached sense of the absurd and because she does not cheat, she is able, in this assured … collection of stories, to exploit a demanding genre to the full.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

“[Colwin] is deserving of a place—on syllabi and reading lists and, yes, in the literary canon—as one of the last century’s great fiction writers.” —Electric Literature

“Colwin wrings magic from ordinary lives.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A comedy of manners that reminds us that manners are comic and should be enjoyed as such.” —The New York Times

“Colwin writes with such sunny skill, and such tireless enthusiasm…. One reads with fascination the steps by which lovers in one story after another stumble upon their forthright declarations.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

“Virtually flawless…. A tour de force.” —Los Angeles Times

“A writer whose rare gift it was to evoke contentment, satisfaction, and affection.” —The New Yorker

“The glittering, generous, delicious world of Laurie Colwin’s fiction is a gift and a lodestar. When writers speak of our favorites, our literary godmothers, her name invariably enters the conversation. How thrilling to know that readers new to her will now have the pleasure of discovering her glorious work. We need her voice, her heart, and her paean to joy, now more than ever.” —Dani Shapiro, bestselling author of Inheritance

“A great deal of the pleasure a reader derives from any of Laurie Colwin’s work … is a result of her fine craftsmanship, and it has always seemed to me that the short story is her strong suit. She understands its shape so well that she sees to it each one is a whole meal, not one course of a larger menu.” —Lori Miller, The New York Times

“Colwin is ingenious, comedic, and spirited.” —The Boston Globe

“I have loved Laurie Colwin’s work for forty-some years, all of it, every honest, deep, friendly, funny, heartbreaking, hopeful word.” —Anne Lamott, bestselling author of Almost Everything and Dusk, Night, Dawn

“Smart, droll, and emotionally complex…. Colwin had the power to make her readers believe in life’s possibilities—whether they came in the form of a crispy baked chicken or minor fame as a booty-shaking, back-up singer. Her books still have that power.” —NPR

“An infallible recipe for happiness: read as much Laurie Colwin as you can.” —Emma Straub, bestselling author of All Adults Here

“To read Laurie Colwin, whether her wryly eloquent fiction or her richly detailed nonfiction, is to enter the sensibility of a singular human. Long before there were food bloggers and Bookstagrammers, Colwin understood that strong opinions and witty failures could appeal to readers of all ages and stages.” —Bethanne Patrick

“If anyone wrote eloquently and magnificently about affairs of the heart, it was Laurie Colwin.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“[Colwin’s] intricate worlds—full of people who lovingly revolve around one another, with occasional pit stops in their kitchens, dining rooms, and local coffee shops—have been a refuge from my own overcomplicated life more times than I can count.”—Melanie Rehak, Bookforum

“I read my first Laurie Colwin book way way back in the 1970s and have adored her ever since: Reading her exuberant prose, her elegant (but not at all stuffy) sentences, I always marvel at her absolute love for her characters in all their foibles and their flaws, and how she urges us to have the same generosity toward them (and ourselves). Basically, reading (and rereading) Colwin’s short stories and novels always makes me happy.” —Nancy Pearl, co-author of The Writer’s Library