Fiction and the Facts of Life

"The cat is dead. Minnie. Minnie is dead....The snow is coming down harder now than at any time during the day. Upon all the living and the dead." Thus begins Fiction and the Facts of Life: with a loss, some humor, and a reference to James Joyce. The narrator, Rachel, is a writer who is coming to terms with her art and her life. After the cat dies, she goes for solace to her oldest friend, but the friend is more interested in complaining about how she was portrayed in Rachel's most recent b...