The first phase of my comma awakening came several decades ago when I found myself intellectually, physically, and psychically uncomfortable while reading Patricia Highsmith’s wonderful novel The Blunderer. The cause of my angst was not Highsmith’s exquisite rendering of a nightmarish trap, but her use of commas.
From the moment Liam was born, it was obvious that there was something different about him. His hair was metallic silver, and blood vessels were plainly visible through his very light-colored skin. “Oh my God!” the nurse exclaimed as she rushed from the delivery room. Moments later, she returned with the doctor, who took one look at the newborn and hurried out too. When the doctor returned, Cindy, Liam’s mother, now deeply concerned, asked what was wrong. “Oh, he’s a towhead; he’s a cotton-top,” the doctor responded.
“ Liam wasn’t completely blind, but his zone of clear vision extended only 3 inches from his nose. ”
During the 2020 pandemic, six best-selling African American young adult novelists put their time to good use by combining their enormous talents for this collection of stories about young Black teens in love. Set in one of America's most romantic cities (IMHO) — New York City — these tales of Black love celebrate family as much as they showcase the many ways teenage love can claim a heart.
“Grey can be plenty bright! What do you know about it? I can discern twenty shades of it. If I had a better education, I’d come up with a name for each shade, like they were all separate colours.” Andrey Kurkov does just that on behalf of his protagonist: he describes the shades of gray so vividly that you learn to tell them apart better and better as you leaf through the pages of Grey Bees.