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NEVER. . .have I had a reading experience like this one.
Completely unprepared for this, Sullivan's book took me by surprise. One does not expect a memoir be thrilling, terrifying, cliff-hanging -- I mean the way Tom Clancy's CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER is.
Reading THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE FROM HERE is like riding on a runaway train. The journey begins:
"In the spring of 1997, a few weeks before my college graduation my mother disappeared. Over the years, I had grown used to her leaving: a four-day cocaine binge; a wedding at City Hall to which I was not invited; the months she locked herself behind her bedroom door and emerged only to buy cigarettes. I'd spent the greater part of my life feeling abandoned by my mother. Yet she'd always return -- blazing into the kitchen to cook up a holiday feast for ten. . .back from her drug dealer on Brooklyn's Ninth Avenue.
"On the morning of my graduation, though, dressed in a black gown, I walked up the promenade to receive my diploma. . . . My mother's face didn't appear among the proud, applauding parents. I knew then that I'd never see her again. . . ."
Well, then. Issues with the mother. This I can deal with. This I can top, actually. And it all takes place in New York (Brooklyn, Manhattan), where everything is ridiculously scattered and fast. New Yorkers scream and zoom about under the ground like crazed Formicidae, eating things I cannot pronounce -- while I am languidly, safely ensconced in the South, sipping lemonade on a porch. I've seen Sullivan on Internet videos -- a beautiful, brilliant young woman speaking four times faster than I do.
But then the train speeds up. And now the sudden horror when you realize the train is out of control, zinging faster down the rails, my God.
In the railroad car you're riding in, there is, figuratively, a camera. Sullivan eases you behind the camera, which records every single thing -- now and in the past. The camera is outfitted with x-ray vision into Sullivan's heart and soul, as the train plunges down the track. . . .
"Turning to Ursula, I hesitated. 'We're taking a bath. . .together?'
'So what?'
Inside the cramped bathroom, steam ribboned, clouding the mirrors and windows. Ursula's mother was dousing the water with blue crystals, humming as she poured.
Ursula removed her socks, unbuckled her belt, and slid her jeans to the floor. . . .
'I don't think my mother would like this,' I said, uneasy."
We are led into delicatessens and diners, where Sullivan's mother, frequently high on cocaine, works as a waitress:
"When we arrived at the deli one Saturday morning, I said, 'We're home.'
My mother threw open the metal gate. 'Not home Lisa,' she said, puzzled. 'This is work. . . .'
I bolted inside. . .and marveled over the pristine linoleum floors, at the revolving display of potato chips, pork rinds, and Cracker Jack suspended from metal clips near the door. Boxes of Nerds, stacks of watermelon gum on the racks in front of the register boxes of pasta and tissues perfectly arranged on the shelves. Cans of Coke, Tab, and Pepsi in gleaming rows behind the clear refrigerator doors at the back of the store.
'We could live here,' I said.
'This isn't our home,' [my mother] said."
Her mother would subject her to severe mental cruelty, and then rush to protect her. Felicia was emotionally abused, but she was not, at least not always, a neglected child. She was loved, to the extent that her mother was capable of loving a child, but the love was doled out in scraps and shards. Thus at Coney Island, age nine:
"'Take me on the rides,' I said.
All the rides in Coney Island have a height requirement, and a flat palm halted us at each ticket booth. But with a quick glare from my mother, we were ushered past the chain ropes and we hopped on the pirate ship shaped like a giant canoe. She buckled me in, yanked on the strap, hard. . .we clutched each other's hands as the boat began to swing faster. I loved this thrill -- the stomach drop, the quick, stolen breaths, the momentary fear that the ride would never stop, we could fall, and the ground would give way. We were wild-eyed; raising our arms, we screamed. . . .
Coming off the ship, my legs wobbled. . . . Massaging my neck, she asked if I was okay, if I wanted to go home.
'I want to be here,' I said."
They were poor and moved constantly. Sullivan and her mother reversed roles, with Sullivan, not yet a teenager, taking charge when her mother passed out. There was a stream of boyfriends (men in her mother's life); blessedly, one of the good ones became almost a real father to her. Sullivan's mother called her a thief and then forced her to help steal money:
"'We have to go,' [her mother] said. 'Put on your clothes.'
'Go where? It's the middle of the night.' I was scared that she had lost it, that she finally had gone crazy. Because she looked crazy. . . .
When I didn't say anything didn't move, my mother stripped the blankets off my bed. 'I need you to keep watch for us. We need this money. Don't you understand how much I owe?'
'Not me,' I said in a small voice.
'Who else if not you?'
I slid to the floor an drew my knees up close, allowing what she'd said to sink in."
I imagine many readers will think that Sullivan is not going to make it as an adult. I don't see how a person can grow up like this and even dream of being a normal adult or anywhere near it:
"I tell Merritt that tomorrow I have an appointment, a consultation to sell my eggs. To cover credit-card debt, rent for the apartment in Little Italy I say, but my friend knows better. Merritt knows how much cocaine eight thousand dollars could buy. . .
'They'll test you.'
'I don't plan on failing,' I say. . . .
'When does your trip back to sobriety begin?'
'Tomorrow,' I say.
Cocaine was Sullivan's nemesis and savior:
"'So what was it [cocaine] like?' Emily asks. . . .
We hear jackhammers and power drills outside, shaking bodies handling great machines, cracking the pavement, spilling hot tar.
'It's like Broadway up my nose,' I say."
Your past informs the present time of your life, and vice versa, with the present shaping all of your memories. So I like the way the book is organized -- a natural segueing back and forth between the now and then of a life recalled.
Read this stunning memoir. Sullivan's writing is lively, all grace and grit, and you will not find many more accomplished wordsmiths writing today.
In my opinion, Robbie is among the most brilliantly - and lovingly - created characters in fiction. Robbie is a lawyer, a nice Jewish boy, handsome, sexy, funny, and a complex human being.
“You could never count on him for honesty, assuming he even knew what it was. He was unruly and incorrigible. But if she stumbled, he’d come running. She couldn’t even say for sure she’d be able to reach out when he extended a hand. But he’d be there. She wasn’t going to forgive him, really. But she had to stop pretending with herself. Nine hundred people had just turned out, all there to buoy Robbie Feaver in his grief, nearly every one a friend who’d experienced his openness and the soothing warmth of his care. And she was one, too. You couldn’t fight facts.”
There have been at least two Robbie Feavers in my life, and as much as I love men, I loved these two most of all. It was an extraordinary delight to find such a beloved character in a novel.
Robbie shows us what love truly is - unconditional love, the kind of love you would be both blessed and unlikely to find in your lifetime. The man is deeply flawed: dishonest, irresponsible, undependable. Unfaithful, yet faithful: he strays, but always comes back to you.
In PERSONAL INJURIES, Mr. Turow tests Robbie Feaver (pronounce it “favor”) beyond all limits of physical and emotional endurance. Robbie’s wife has a fatal illness. She is slowly dying throughout the novel. The course of her illness is graphic and heartbreaking. The strength and courage of this woman and her husband are beyond the meaning of courage and strength.
In PERSONAL INJURIES, Mr. Turow explores love in all its forms: Robbie and his wife, Robbie and a lesbian woman, Robbie and his law partner and lifelong friend, Mort Dinnerstein.
“There is deep feeling between these men,” one of the lawyers says, though Robbie and Mort are not homosexual.
In PERSONAL INJURIES, love transcends sex.
Scott Turow is a brilliant writer. He unfailingly delivers a great story, a roller coaster ride, and a page-turning cliffhanger. And don’t pigeonhole this author as a “genre writer” of law thrillers. He is far, far better than that and getting better all the time. PRESUMED INNOCENT is a great read and, in the opinion of many reviewers, his best book. But I think his skill with characterization - making his characters real and complex and exciting for us - is, in PERSONAL INJURIES, superior to his other works.
Arlene Sanders
Author of TIGER BURNING BRIGHT: STORIES
www.ArleneSanders.com
I'm saddened to see so many people writing with little or no compassion for Chris McCandless, and such a limited effort to understand his quest.
Most of us know what he was running from -- problems at home, a society struggling with issues of materialism and morality. But an understanding of what he was searching for -- inner peace, closeness with nature, a quiet and beautiful place in which to think -- eludes many of us, just as it eluded him.
It could be lovely, could it not? Wild strawberries spilling down the riverbank, red poppies flaming the hills, cobalt mountains loping along the sky, like waves in a gently rolling sea. I am blessed to live in such a place, where I can reflect and write in perfect solitude, and I appreciate the beautiful life I have. I live a little like he did, but without his extraordinary deprivation -- the berries, the bag of rice, no way (as he perceived it at that time) to get out.
Jon Krakauer mined this tragedy for the beauty, the goodness, and the hope that could be found in it -- and this bounty was rich! -- and I applaud his book and his wonderful writing, as I applaud the deeply moving film Sean Penn waited so patiently, for ten years, to create.
I agree with some of the points other reviewers have made -- that the particular venture Chris McCandless chose was ill-advised, that he had not adequately prepared for it, and that his family need not have been abandoned and left in the dark.
But we have all screwed up in our lives and hurt people around us, at least once, have we not? Well, I certainly have.
When other people use poor judgment and make mistakes, it's so easy to judge, to criticize, to close our minds. That's the easy way out, isn't it?
Whether we see Chris McCandless as a crazy kid, or as a courageous and intensely spiritual young man, we do know that he died afraid and alone. For that reason, if for no other, I think we need to reach for all the understanding and compassion we can give.
Arlene Sanders
Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia
www.ArleneSanders.com
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(4 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard,” British actor Sir Donald Wolfit reportedly pronounced on his deathbed.
We all love comedy, but few can do it. I believe comedy is something you are born with and that it cannot be learned. The great performance comedians of the 20th century you can count on your fingers and toes: Allen, Ball, Bruce, Burnett, Carlin, Cosby, DeGeneres, Gleason, Goldberg, Hope, Jessel, Murray, Nichols & May, Pryor, Radner, Williams—and I’m about running out, with three digits still left.
Among writers, the humorists number more, but there are not many.
James Nolan is one of the best. His humor is dry, dark, acerbic, subtle, but occasionally Rabelaisian: Aleichem, Almond, Allen (again), Baggott, Beckman, Bombeck, Franklin, Montaigne, Thurber, Twain, Vidal, Vonnegut, Wilde, Wisniewski, and Wylie come to mind.
Nolan is a Southerner, but not a “downhome” type. Nolan is sophisticated, well-educated and widely traveled. So he has a context to put his Southern characters in, and a rich, rich one it is! In PERPETUAL CARE, he moves from city to city with ease, hunting down great stories and delivering them with wit, aplomb and savoir faire to leave you breathless.
As with Philip Wylie’s “Mom” (“the thin, enfeebled martyr whose very urine. . .will etch glass”), women in general, and “Mom” in particular—in the hands of Nolan—get a drubbing:
“In belligerent silence, Jake pushed his mother’s wheelchair up the steep ramp to the cemetery office, her right leg sticking straight out like the prow of a frigate.”
“Like an ostrich, Mrs. Hokum strained her wrinkled, pointy face to the height of a long, curved neck, trying to see over the top of a paneled counter.”
As do teenagers:
“Why couldn’t Jay have become a normal gutter-punk? . . .with green hair and a shirt-stud in his tongue to click against his front teeth for attention?”
The title story, “Perpetual Care,” is the funniest one. The situation—I’m not giving it up here—will absolutely blow you away.
Southerners (I am one) can carry prejudice and discrimination against people, places and things not Southern to ridiculous extremes, and Nolan pokes hilarious fun at all of it.
But this is not to say that PERPETUAL CARE is all comedy; far from it. Below the surface, Nolan lets us know that prejudice is a serious matter, that moms and teenagers deserve to be taken seriously as human beings, and that San Francisco is. . .well, let Nolan tell you!
James Nolan’s deep love and compassion for the zany characters he portrays is always apparent, heightened by the contrast between his true feelings and the shallowness of widespread attitudes he dramatizes for us in his lively and resonant fiction.
His writing is the greatest, his incredible sentences like multi-faceted jewels polished to a high sheen: I challenge you to find English sentences more perfectly and movingly crafted than James Nolan’s.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
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The Sky Isn't Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life by Felicia C. Sullivan
Arlene Sanders, December 31, 2009
NEVER. . .have I had a reading experience like this one.
Completely unprepared for this, Sullivan's book took me by surprise. One does not expect a memoir be thrilling, terrifying, cliff-hanging -- I mean the way Tom Clancy's CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER is.
Reading THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE FROM HERE is like riding on a runaway train. The journey begins:
"In the spring of 1997, a few weeks before my college graduation my mother disappeared. Over the years, I had grown used to her leaving: a four-day cocaine binge; a wedding at City Hall to which I was not invited; the months she locked herself behind her bedroom door and emerged only to buy cigarettes. I'd spent the greater part of my life feeling abandoned by my mother. Yet she'd always return -- blazing into the kitchen to cook up a holiday feast for ten. . .back from her drug dealer on Brooklyn's Ninth Avenue.
"On the morning of my graduation, though, dressed in a black gown, I walked up the promenade to receive my diploma. . . . My mother's face didn't appear among the proud, applauding parents. I knew then that I'd never see her again. . . ."
Well, then. Issues with the mother. This I can deal with. This I can top, actually. And it all takes place in New York (Brooklyn, Manhattan), where everything is ridiculously scattered and fast. New Yorkers scream and zoom about under the ground like crazed Formicidae, eating things I cannot pronounce -- while I am languidly, safely ensconced in the South, sipping lemonade on a porch. I've seen Sullivan on Internet videos -- a beautiful, brilliant young woman speaking four times faster than I do.
But then the train speeds up. And now the sudden horror when you realize the train is out of control, zinging faster down the rails, my God.
In the railroad car you're riding in, there is, figuratively, a camera. Sullivan eases you behind the camera, which records every single thing -- now and in the past. The camera is outfitted with x-ray vision into Sullivan's heart and soul, as the train plunges down the track. . . .
"Turning to Ursula, I hesitated. 'We're taking a bath. . .together?'
'So what?'
Inside the cramped bathroom, steam ribboned, clouding the mirrors and windows. Ursula's mother was dousing the water with blue crystals, humming as she poured.
Ursula removed her socks, unbuckled her belt, and slid her jeans to the floor. . . .
'I don't think my mother would like this,' I said, uneasy."
We are led into delicatessens and diners, where Sullivan's mother, frequently high on cocaine, works as a waitress:
"When we arrived at the deli one Saturday morning, I said, 'We're home.'
My mother threw open the metal gate. 'Not home Lisa,' she said, puzzled. 'This is work. . . .'
I bolted inside. . .and marveled over the pristine linoleum floors, at the revolving display of potato chips, pork rinds, and Cracker Jack suspended from metal clips near the door. Boxes of Nerds, stacks of watermelon gum on the racks in front of the register boxes of pasta and tissues perfectly arranged on the shelves. Cans of Coke, Tab, and Pepsi in gleaming rows behind the clear refrigerator doors at the back of the store.
'We could live here,' I said.
'This isn't our home,' [my mother] said."
Her mother would subject her to severe mental cruelty, and then rush to protect her. Felicia was emotionally abused, but she was not, at least not always, a neglected child. She was loved, to the extent that her mother was capable of loving a child, but the love was doled out in scraps and shards. Thus at Coney Island, age nine:
"'Take me on the rides,' I said.
All the rides in Coney Island have a height requirement, and a flat palm halted us at each ticket booth. But with a quick glare from my mother, we were ushered past the chain ropes and we hopped on the pirate ship shaped like a giant canoe. She buckled me in, yanked on the strap, hard. . .we clutched each other's hands as the boat began to swing faster. I loved this thrill -- the stomach drop, the quick, stolen breaths, the momentary fear that the ride would never stop, we could fall, and the ground would give way. We were wild-eyed; raising our arms, we screamed. . . .
Coming off the ship, my legs wobbled. . . . Massaging my neck, she asked if I was okay, if I wanted to go home.
'I want to be here,' I said."
They were poor and moved constantly. Sullivan and her mother reversed roles, with Sullivan, not yet a teenager, taking charge when her mother passed out. There was a stream of boyfriends (men in her mother's life); blessedly, one of the good ones became almost a real father to her. Sullivan's mother called her a thief and then forced her to help steal money:
"'We have to go,' [her mother] said. 'Put on your clothes.'
'Go where? It's the middle of the night.' I was scared that she had lost it, that she finally had gone crazy. Because she looked crazy. . . .
When I didn't say anything didn't move, my mother stripped the blankets off my bed. 'I need you to keep watch for us. We need this money. Don't you understand how much I owe?'
'Not me,' I said in a small voice.
'Who else if not you?'
I slid to the floor an drew my knees up close, allowing what she'd said to sink in."
I imagine many readers will think that Sullivan is not going to make it as an adult. I don't see how a person can grow up like this and even dream of being a normal adult or anywhere near it:
"I tell Merritt that tomorrow I have an appointment, a consultation to sell my eggs. To cover credit-card debt, rent for the apartment in Little Italy I say, but my friend knows better. Merritt knows how much cocaine eight thousand dollars could buy. . .
'They'll test you.'
'I don't plan on failing,' I say. . . .
'When does your trip back to sobriety begin?'
'Tomorrow,' I say.
Cocaine was Sullivan's nemesis and savior:
"'So what was it [cocaine] like?' Emily asks. . . .
We hear jackhammers and power drills outside, shaking bodies handling great machines, cracking the pavement, spilling hot tar.
'It's like Broadway up my nose,' I say."
Your past informs the present time of your life, and vice versa, with the present shaping all of your memories. So I like the way the book is organized -- a natural segueing back and forth between the now and then of a life recalled.
Read this stunning memoir. Sullivan's writing is lively, all grace and grit, and you will not find many more accomplished wordsmiths writing today.
Personal Injuries by Scott Turow
Arlene Sanders, August 21, 2009
I know Robbie Feaver.
Maybe you do, too - if you’re lucky.
In my opinion, Robbie is among the most brilliantly - and lovingly - created characters in fiction. Robbie is a lawyer, a nice Jewish boy, handsome, sexy, funny, and a complex human being.
“You could never count on him for honesty, assuming he even knew what it was. He was unruly and incorrigible. But if she stumbled, he’d come running. She couldn’t even say for sure she’d be able to reach out when he extended a hand. But he’d be there. She wasn’t going to forgive him, really. But she had to stop pretending with herself. Nine hundred people had just turned out, all there to buoy Robbie Feaver in his grief, nearly every one a friend who’d experienced his openness and the soothing warmth of his care. And she was one, too. You couldn’t fight facts.”
There have been at least two Robbie Feavers in my life, and as much as I love men, I loved these two most of all. It was an extraordinary delight to find such a beloved character in a novel.
Robbie shows us what love truly is - unconditional love, the kind of love you would be both blessed and unlikely to find in your lifetime. The man is deeply flawed: dishonest, irresponsible, undependable. Unfaithful, yet faithful: he strays, but always comes back to you.
In PERSONAL INJURIES, Mr. Turow tests Robbie Feaver (pronounce it “favor”) beyond all limits of physical and emotional endurance. Robbie’s wife has a fatal illness. She is slowly dying throughout the novel. The course of her illness is graphic and heartbreaking. The strength and courage of this woman and her husband are beyond the meaning of courage and strength.
In PERSONAL INJURIES, Mr. Turow explores love in all its forms: Robbie and his wife, Robbie and a lesbian woman, Robbie and his law partner and lifelong friend, Mort Dinnerstein.
“There is deep feeling between these men,” one of the lawyers says, though Robbie and Mort are not homosexual.
In PERSONAL INJURIES, love transcends sex.
Scott Turow is a brilliant writer. He unfailingly delivers a great story, a roller coaster ride, and a page-turning cliffhanger. And don’t pigeonhole this author as a “genre writer” of law thrillers. He is far, far better than that and getting better all the time. PRESUMED INNOCENT is a great read and, in the opinion of many reviewers, his best book. But I think his skill with characterization - making his characters real and complex and exciting for us - is, in PERSONAL INJURIES, superior to his other works.
Arlene Sanders
Author of TIGER BURNING BRIGHT: STORIES
www.ArleneSanders.com
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Arlene Sanders, August 21, 2009
I'm saddened to see so many people writing with little or no compassion for Chris McCandless, and such a limited effort to understand his quest.
Most of us know what he was running from -- problems at home, a society struggling with issues of materialism and morality. But an understanding of what he was searching for -- inner peace, closeness with nature, a quiet and beautiful place in which to think -- eludes many of us, just as it eluded him.
It could be lovely, could it not? Wild strawberries spilling down the riverbank, red poppies flaming the hills, cobalt mountains loping along the sky, like waves in a gently rolling sea. I am blessed to live in such a place, where I can reflect and write in perfect solitude, and I appreciate the beautiful life I have. I live a little like he did, but without his extraordinary deprivation -- the berries, the bag of rice, no way (as he perceived it at that time) to get out.
Jon Krakauer mined this tragedy for the beauty, the goodness, and the hope that could be found in it -- and this bounty was rich! -- and I applaud his book and his wonderful writing, as I applaud the deeply moving film Sean Penn waited so patiently, for ten years, to create.
I agree with some of the points other reviewers have made -- that the particular venture Chris McCandless chose was ill-advised, that he had not adequately prepared for it, and that his family need not have been abandoned and left in the dark.
But we have all screwed up in our lives and hurt people around us, at least once, have we not? Well, I certainly have.
When other people use poor judgment and make mistakes, it's so easy to judge, to criticize, to close our minds. That's the easy way out, isn't it?
Whether we see Chris McCandless as a crazy kid, or as a courageous and intensely spiritual young man, we do know that he died afraid and alone. For that reason, if for no other, I think we need to reach for all the understanding and compassion we can give.
Arlene Sanders
Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia
www.ArleneSanders.com
(4 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
Perpetual Care and Other Stories by James Nolan
Arlene Sanders, August 14, 2008
JAMES NOLAN is a comedic genius.
“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard,” British actor Sir Donald Wolfit reportedly pronounced on his deathbed.
We all love comedy, but few can do it. I believe comedy is something you are born with and that it cannot be learned. The great performance comedians of the 20th century you can count on your fingers and toes: Allen, Ball, Bruce, Burnett, Carlin, Cosby, DeGeneres, Gleason, Goldberg, Hope, Jessel, Murray, Nichols & May, Pryor, Radner, Williams—and I’m about running out, with three digits still left.
Among writers, the humorists number more, but there are not many.
James Nolan is one of the best. His humor is dry, dark, acerbic, subtle, but occasionally Rabelaisian: Aleichem, Almond, Allen (again), Baggott, Beckman, Bombeck, Franklin, Montaigne, Thurber, Twain, Vidal, Vonnegut, Wilde, Wisniewski, and Wylie come to mind.
Nolan is a Southerner, but not a “downhome” type. Nolan is sophisticated, well-educated and widely traveled. So he has a context to put his Southern characters in, and a rich, rich one it is! In PERPETUAL CARE, he moves from city to city with ease, hunting down great stories and delivering them with wit, aplomb and savoir faire to leave you breathless.
As with Philip Wylie’s “Mom” (“the thin, enfeebled martyr whose very urine. . .will etch glass”), women in general, and “Mom” in particular—in the hands of Nolan—get a drubbing:
“In belligerent silence, Jake pushed his mother’s wheelchair up the steep ramp to the cemetery office, her right leg sticking straight out like the prow of a frigate.”
“Like an ostrich, Mrs. Hokum strained her wrinkled, pointy face to the height of a long, curved neck, trying to see over the top of a paneled counter.”
As do teenagers:
“Why couldn’t Jay have become a normal gutter-punk? . . .with green hair and a shirt-stud in his tongue to click against his front teeth for attention?”
The title story, “Perpetual Care,” is the funniest one. The situation—I’m not giving it up here—will absolutely blow you away.
Southerners (I am one) can carry prejudice and discrimination against people, places and things not Southern to ridiculous extremes, and Nolan pokes hilarious fun at all of it.
But this is not to say that PERPETUAL CARE is all comedy; far from it. Below the surface, Nolan lets us know that prejudice is a serious matter, that moms and teenagers deserve to be taken seriously as human beings, and that San Francisco is. . .well, let Nolan tell you!
James Nolan’s deep love and compassion for the zany characters he portrays is always apparent, heightened by the contrast between his true feelings and the shallowness of widespread attitudes he dramatizes for us in his lively and resonant fiction.
His writing is the greatest, his incredible sentences like multi-faceted jewels polished to a high sheen: I challenge you to find English sentences more perfectly and movingly crafted than James Nolan’s.
Read these stories. Savor every word. Enjoy!