Of late, my greatest pleasure has been Laurie Colwin. The Manhattanite author, who died in her late forties in 1992, wrote a series of entertainingly wry novels about contemporary domestic and society life in New York. The page I most recently folded the corner of (all my favourite books resemble origami) can be found in Happy All the Time (1978), about the pursuit and illusion of marital bliss. It features a scene in which Vincent, a haphazard, freckled chap, goes shopping for flowers before visiting his new girlfriend’s apartment for the first time. He asks the florist, “a stooped old Greek”, for “something that looks like the things they hang on prize-winning horses”.
“Death, birth, or you got a girl?” replies the florist.
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