Saturday, March 1, 2008

In Which Rabbit Offers Readers' Advisory

I just finished Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You, a wonderful gift from a kind friend. It was breathtaking. Each short story in the collection brings you into the characters' worlds of longing and fear. I agree with one critic's note that the emotional timbre of each story is similar...but, as is noted in the same review, July works in a broad emotional space to begin with.

Her writing reminds me of Flannery O'Connor, especially "Everything That Rises Must Converge," a truly heartbreaking short story whose last line has always stayed with me: "The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow."

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