Friends 'til the End if the End is the Middle

I know, I know.  What's up with the winter reading material?  Summer just started, and it's too early for Christmas in July.  But I have a good excuse for turning to holiday homicide.  It's because I was fleeing Sally Rooney.

Yes, Sally Rooney, acclaimed author of Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You, both of which I enjoyed, especially Normal People.  But when I got halfway through Rooney's debut, Conversations with Friends, which is about a college student having an affair with a married man, I had to put it down.  

The college student -- Frances -- is bleeding and in pain (whether or not as the result of sex with the married guy is unclear) and needs to be rushed to the ER.  Now, as you may know, I have a history of not doing well with books about blood.  Add psychological torment, and I'm a goner.  So I closed the book before I could feel that first nauseous twinge and reached for Mary Daheim's The Alpine Winter.  It was the only new, known quantity left on my shelf.  Also, if there's a story that'll cheer me up, then it's one about finding a body after eating turkey and unwrapping mittens.  Books -- much like life -- are all about tone.  And the tone of a yuletide murder peopled by even-keeled characters is preferable to the one of a girl in pain losing her mind.  

Still, I don't like being bested by a book.  It's only happened to me twice, once with The Help and once with a bargain book whose name I can't remember.  (Somehow, some way, I even managed to finish The Bell Jar.)  And I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't curious about how things pan out for Frances.  So maybe someday I'll pick up the thread of Rooney's Conversations again.  (I didn't throw it out like I did The Help.)  But for now I'm ensconced in Alpine and its small-town eccentricities.

Because sometimes cold comfort is the warmest kind.  

And some friends are best left behind.