Rich Proulx author page

Across answers floating above the shapes have to DIP down and pick up the letters in those shapes to match the clues. I've fixed up the answers below the grid. SIMULATED becomes SIMULCASTED, etc.

The triangles spell CHIPS and the circles spell SALSA. (Triangular chips are dipped into round salsa bowls? Maybe?)

Once you solve the picture clues, answers that cross through circled letters are synonyms.

The circled letters spell REBUSES.

A. A. MILNE shows up often in crosswords. "People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day" is a great quote.

Milne wrote all those stories that allow giddy children to say POOH out loud. He also wrote poems for them. The King's Breakfast is charming, amusing, and clever. Try reading it out loud. (You have to know that an Alderney is a dairy cow.)

Until Jeff highlighted the theme answers, I didn't realize they were distributed symmetrically in the grid. Nice touch.

In 1989, Kazuo Ishiguro won the Booker Prize for his novel The Remains of the Day. Oh, right, he later won this other thing — the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Like many people, I read that book and then wondered what else this wonderfully restrained and understated British novelist had written, so I turned to Never Let Me Go. The clue at 19 Across calls it "dystopian" and it's certainly that. It's also about as far from Remains stylistically and thematically as you can get.

Both books are well worth reading and both were adapted for film. Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson were among eight Oscar nominees for Remains. Never Let Me Go was a much less successful film. Stick to the book on that one.