This style of essay from Gerard, i.e., less internal, is where I find her most appealing attributes as a nonfiction writer. As in “Going Diamond,” Gerard is able to communicate bigger societal/political issues via a local story. She takes her … Continue reading →

I have found Gerard’s writing to be difficult to get through. It’s hard to find the “why” or “what for” in her essays and I wondered the same things in “The Mayor of Williams Park.” We meet G.W. Rolle, a … Continue reading →

“The Freeze-Dried Groom” by Margaret Atwood was one of those stories that kept getting stranger and stranger. Each turn managed to be a surprise, even though the title of the story gave away the biggest twist of all. As I … Continue reading →

  In “The Noiseness of Sleep,” I was most attracted to the alliteration. The first line of the poem begins with the hard, C of careful, and ends, similarly, with the word carry. Further down, in the poem’s third stanza, … Continue reading →

I’ve been enjoying the structure of Bright Dead Things because a group of poems tend to have one focus so it creates a story throughout the poems. “The Nosiness of Sleep” was a bit confusing to me. If it didn’t have … Continue reading →

This is a story devoted to Charlie Macauley, the man who has appeared and re-appeared only in glimpses. In the stories before this, we’re led to believe that Charlie is a sympathetic character, a troubled man who suffers from post-traumatic … Continue reading →

I was surprised, as I often am while reading Strout, that Charlie, the man we’d met in a previous chapter, acted so dishonestly.  We see him, in this chapter, engage with a prostitute called Tracy. He even treats his wife, … Continue reading →

To be honest, I struggle with pinpointing what this essay is about. It would be easy to say that it’s a recollection of losing innocence, but I want to know it’s more complicated than that. Gerard uses one-liners at the … Continue reading →

“The Hit-Thumb Theory” by Elizabeth Strout centered around the complexity of Charlie, a man who was cheating on his wife with a prostitute that he has fallen in love with. He resents everything about his wife but feels pity for … Continue reading →