But: Life Isn't Like That, Is It?

Life’s stories are always prone to disruption and digression, thwarting the neat storybook narrative we love so much.

Almost all of our stories follow the same basic pattern: beginning, middle, end: exposition, action and climax. It’s a neat and tidy way of telling a story. But life’s not like that, is it? Life is not neat and tidy, it doesn’t obey the rules. Life’s stories—like the stories told here in But, personal and impersonal, historical and contemporary—are punctuated by disruption, ...