This is a blog about books and reading
The risk in writing a domestic thriller with 9/11 as backdrop is that the geopolitical material comes off as a gimmick rather than an integral story element.
The book uses Grand Guignol techniques to literalize the process of tearing oneself open in the act of artistic creation.
What could possibly go wrong?
The author returns to the slasher film saturated ground he has trod before to provide a loving homage that leans a bit too heavily on insider knowledge of the genre.
“A lot of it reminds me of just how much I have come through. And how much the people I know have come through. And what it was like to lose people.”
“I think I see life in very, very noir terms,” says the author, who considered quitting after finishing work on her latest novel.
“I didn’t have much of a relationship with masculinity growing up,” MacIntyre says. “I grew up among women.”
The brief novel’s propulsion and effect result from its author’s key understanding of just how far to push her technique to achieve maximum effect.
Though Bhat’s new book is described as her second novel, the individual pieces comprise all the attributes of linked stories.
The Toronto author’s story provides a metaphorical response to a very real history of trauma and violence.