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At the end of two weeks in off-the grid Quebec, I braved the bright lights of a (now defunct) bookstore in the Ottawa airport. I had nothing left to read and a two-and-a-half hour flight ahead of me. I picked up Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, because I love books set during World War Two.

Quite a ways into this story, someone at a party asks Emma how she met Dex. “We grew up together.” Their growing up and getting old (er) after university is the story of this charming book, which is laugh-out-loud funny and, at times, gut-wrenchingly sad. It’s not so much chick lit as Jane Austen on