Poems for a Girlhood, it's subtitled. But it's actually for girlhoods. For the author's. And Reena Virk's. At least, for what of Reena Virk's girlhood is known and what can be imagined. She was murdered on November 14, 1997 when she was fourteen years old. At least eight teenagers participated in her
"The past presses so hard on the present, the present is badly bruised, blood brims under the skin." These lines from Brenda Shaughnessy's poem “Nachträglichkeit”* fit beautifully with Darren Greer's new novel, Advocate: Not only because much of Advocate is preoccupied with memory, with what the characters carry with them
For a love of birds with wings, especially parrots. "But what did happen to Adam and Eve? Did they hollow out the Tree of Knowledge, make a canoe and then paddle east to Europe? Fnyeh. Not these Heyerdahls. But, if there ever were an Adam and Eve, who knows where they
It doesn't happen everyday: a single book resulting in a new reading resolution. Even the idea of it is somehow misleading, isn't it? Because in the life of a voracious reader, is it possible to isolate a single reading experience and claim it as the genesis of a change in
What's interesting about each of these novels is that none fits a traditional model in the suspense genre. Shari Lapena's The Couple Next Door is the closest to a conventional thriller. But even her novel spends more time on characterization and atmosphere than many loyal genre readers would tolerate. Nonetheless, she
