In the last installment, Ella meets Detective Ferguson in his precinct office. The interview includes all her odd experiences in the neighborhood and disturbing incidents in the unit next door to her apartment. After calming herself at a pizza place, … Continue reading Only Regrets – Installment 15 (The Runners’ Pack)
With a glass of red wine in hand, I paced the two rooms of my apartment and puzzled over her remarks. Brave and together? Me? Continue reading If You Aren’t in Over Your Head, How do You know How Tall You Are? Attributed to T.S. Eliot, source unknown
Ella meets with a local police detective who has asked her for information regarding her presence near a corpse found in a trash burner in her neighborhood. Ella describes her worries about strange sounds in the unit next to hers … Continue reading Only Regrets – Installment 14 (Officer Friendly?)
Ella was snooping through the vacant unit next to her apartment when an attack knocked her out. After recovering, she found her apartment burglarized but only a photo of her deceased husband was missing. My forehead was throbbing the next … Continue reading Only Regrets – Installment 13 (The Station House)
Re-cap: Ella has moved into a new neighborhood and loves it until she learns someone might have been murdered a few blocks away from her home. A dog threatens her at the murder site. She calls Animal Control to report … Continue reading Only Regrets – Installment 12 (Knock-Out)
Writing in a time of severe social, economic, and psychological dislocation (the COVID-19 pandemic), I relished “The Wee Free Men,” the initial book of four, whose plucky main character, Tiffany Aching, experiences a more surreal existence than she ever imagined. … Continue reading Terry Pratchett’s Coup de Coeur
[In the last installment, Ella called Animal Control Officer Falk back to her neighborhood. She suspected an abused dog lived captive in 2A, the apartment next to hers. Earlier, Falk had discovered a mutilated corpse inside a trash-burner a few … Continue reading “Only Regrets” Installment 11 (Apartment 2A)
These days, when an intelligent and determined person like Greta Thunburg can convey the urgency of climate degradation and hope to lead others to effect change, her actions and message defy societal limitations often imposed on people who manage their … Continue reading THE KITCHEN DAUGHTER
Although the works are not analogous, Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge reminds me of Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology. Both works survey and reveal the heart of a community and the relationships of its inhabitants. Strout experiments successfully with multiple … Continue reading Notes on “Olive Kitteridge”
Plenty of reviews favor Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, an apocalyptic novel whose narrative kills off 99% of humanity in a contemporary 21st century setting. I picked it up to read in tandem with Good Morning, Midnight by … Continue reading Notes on “Station Eleven”
