This fall, I "discovered" the novelist Hilma Wolitzer, who is now around ninety years old. Wolitzer raised a daughter, Meg, who is quite famous because of "The Wife" (which became a Glenn Close movie). Hilma Wolitzer began writing seriously in her forties, and her career continues to this day. The story that is generating buzz--"The Great Escape"--basically recalls Hilma's own struggle with Covid. (Hilma lost her husband of several decades during the pandemic.) "The Great Escape" immediately takes off; the narrator recalls how, for many years, she would try to initiate sex in the morning, before the kids ran in. But, in the octogenarian phase, the narrator would just check to see if her husband was still breathing. This was enough for gratitude. A living spouse, and then another wonderful mundane day--"breakfast, vitamins, bills, argument, blood pressure pills, lunch, doctor, cholesterol meds, dinner, phone, TV, sleeping pills, sleep,...