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Her protagonists are mostly women coming into their own or facing down middle age with both a keen sense of the sardonic and a deep reservoir of self-compassion.

He always had a very sardonic approach, says Geoffrey, and that was his interpretation, he adds.

But Hernández's appeal is rooted in his self-awareness and sardonic humor.

“I was a layer cake of abandonment and hurt and fury, iced with a smile,” goes a typically curt, sardonic line in Manguso’s second novel, which chronicles the slow-motion collapse of a marriage.

With its sardonic line “You want to know if I’m moral enough join the Army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug?,” it became an unofficial anthem of the antiwar movement.