Amazon’s description of a Season of Flowers by Michael Garland starts off with the listing of the different flowers (Snowdrops and crocuses yield to tulips…) brings out the song “A few of my favorite things” loudly in my minds ear. The book itself brings out the inner artist eye. As well as the inner poet. And while this book many not become one of my favorite things, it is well up there in the “I like this a lot” category. From Spring to Summer to […]
Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance
In spite of this having been on a number of “best of 2016” lists, I walked into this book completely blind, and was fully shocked, disturbed, and yet driven by it. It’s a really tough read, not just psychologically, but because it’s brutally graphic in a way that doesn’t exactly require a warning, but is unusual for a Western reader used to a vaseline’d lens covering sex and violence. I really loved this, and it continues to haunt me a little bit. I can’t imagine […]