"We Wish You Luck," by Caroline Zancan

And…yet another book about writers! No, I am not in a rut, it’s just a coincidence…I think! “We Wish You Luck” (Riverhead, 2020), by Caroline Zancan, is a novel about a group of aspiring writers at a low residence graduate writing program. Twice a year they meet at the school in Vermont for ten days. The expected happens: friendships, romances, enmities, competitions, etc. But there are strong elements of surprise as well, and the author keeps us guessing until the end. So the book is a mixture of a writer’s novel, a campus novel, and a small-community-in-a-small-space novel…with a touch of mystery and a touch of thriller in the mix. The three main characters form a quirky, very loyal group that fascinates the other writing students who form the collective “we” that narrates the book as a sort of Greek chorus. No one knows what the members of the group will do next. They are the “popular kids” with a touch of menace, and everyone wants to be near them to see what they will do next. And then there are the instructors, famous or semi-famous writers themselves, who have their own issues. Readers are left on the proverbial edge of their seats to find out how it all turns out. But not in a bestseller-y embossed-cover-paperback way. Well, maybe a little. But mostly in a literary way.