Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Well, there's a writer who's been creeping into my consciousness,

and her most recent book is called Prosperous Friends.

Her name is Christine Scott.

The book is published by Grove.

And I've read, what, three or four of her books.

And each time the books insinuate themselves more deeply into my imagination.

And with this one, I thought, oh, how interesting.

The book seems to be, at least for the first 50 pages,

what happened after Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. Now Now that book, as it goes along, gets so dark,

viscous really and unpleasant that you can barely see what's happening in it anymore.

And this book, Prosperous Friends, seems to take place today,

but at the end of Portrait of a Lady, in a New Unhappy Marriage,

the woman's name once again is Isabel, not Isabel Archer, but Isabel Stark. She's married an artist type. It's not

horrible, Osmond. This one's name is what? Ned. Ned Born. Yes. Am I right? Was that the

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