They considered themselves midnight adventurers, coming off the hill they so lovingly called Henshit Mountain, to cross the pond in the dead of winter with sleds to “borrow” lumber from Artie Donolan who had ”borrowed” it from Breakheart Reservation, a state park. The park, at its deepest end, bordered on land that the Donolans had worked for years, including timber they ripped out of the state park as long as a few eyes stayed closed. To the boys from Henshit Mountain, the Donolan rape was not unknown, not to these teenagers, who were only enacting their own form of justice, borrowing enough lumber to build themselves a clubhouse at the thickly-treed section of the mountain. With various spurts of energy, even in summer when they floated rafts of lumber across the same pond from the same lumberyard, rooms were added to the clubhouse. The building rose majestically, they all agreed, they who had to a man become proficient carpenters and finish men.
The Journal
In the Coal Mine Shadows
The first year after Henry’s death, the Blackwells cleared the hilly land. By the next spring, a half-dozen acres were ready to plant. On a frosty March morning, Mary headed to Harrisonburg. In her right pants pocket was ninety-two dollars folded over with twine into a tight, thick wad. She could feel its weight on her thigh, but she reached into her pocket just to feel it, to touch it and make sure it was still there. This was her and Henry’s life savings, and most of it would be spent that day on those little black specks of gold called burley seed. The future of the Blackwell family depended upon seeds.
Shades of Grey: A Review
There’s something compelling about a Jasper Fforde novel, something that sucks you into the story, tossing you along until the end when it finally grinds you up and spits you out before you even know what’s happened. Fforde is a true satirist, not just pulling apart the way we tell stories, but pulling apart accepted critical conventions and putting them back together again, reinterpreting criticism and analysis from the inside out.
Murmur
The boy’s skin was very pale. Arms turned down, thin strips of black wrapped around, mapping where the skin didn’t meet. He was very handsome and Murmur was glad.
The Girl With Glass Feet: A Review
Thoughtful, dreamlike, meandering–these were my expectations of Ali Shaw’s debut novel, The Girl with Glass Feet. For the first chapter or so, the novel held up. Lines like “It was a darkening afternoon whose final shafts of light passed between trees, swung across the earth like searchlights,” drew me into St. Hauda’s Land, setting up yet more expectations. Then it all fell flat.
Candor: A Review
If I were pitching Pam Bachorz’ Candor at an editorial meeting, I’d call it “dystopian contemporary YA meets The Stepford Wives with a dash of Wisteria Lane from a male perspective”.
Next Year in Paradise
Ginnie and Roger were already planning next year’s trip, when they’d just arrived for this year’s annual family vacation, one of the lesser Caribbean islands with a Catholic-sounding name. They preferred to just call it Paradise, as in Next year in Paradise we’ll rent a car for the far beach, the one with the goats. When their daughter Maxine was little, Roger would hoist her on his shoulders to hang their bag of peanut butter sandwiches from a high branch so the mangy gray goats couldn’t nuzzle for a bite. By next year, Maxine’s baby would be old enough to make goat sounds, if Ginnie sang “Old MacDonald’s Farm” like she used to with Maxine.
Cara
It’s strange to grow old. I feel I’m the same person inside. All my life I was around people more or less my own age, and suddenly there are hardly any left. I think about death all the time. I guess you could say I’m apprehensive. I don’t want to suffer. I live my life as if my actions could make a difference, but I suppose at heart I’m a fatalist. Whatever happens, happens. I have to accept the fact that my efforts might not have the results I want them to have.
Dogs in Guatemala
All the dogs in Guatemala are like this. It’s what Laurie wants to tell her, this college sophomore crying in the street over yet another brutalized puppy, except she can’t imagine a worse moment for explanations. “Come on, Arabella.” Laurie touches the girl’s sharp-boned back. “We can’t just hang around out here. Not in the [...]
Blessings and Curses by Anne Whitehouse, Reviewed
It is rare to find a volume of poetry that stares so directly and honestly at life as does Anne Whitehouse’s new collection, Blessings and Curses