One thing that appeals to me about writing is that I’m able to communicate without being looked at directly, or at least judged away from my appearance. Issues increasingly arise as the job of the journalist now necessarily requires a front-facing camera and the ability to stand onstage to an audience of thousands and opine about fascism, say, or love.
Whatever the season, there is warmth to be found in these stories. But the heat arises from her characters’ intellectual willfulness, however misguided, and in the way their author thwarts or punishes them for it. The willfulness and the punishment are also Ozick’s, and while reading her best stories, you can feel her striving, ecstatic presence everywhere, like belief.
As is to be expected of a cosy crime novel, this second book in The Bookshop Detectives series is a light and often very funny read about a dark subject. Yes, there’s death and danger, but there’s also Dungeons and Dragons, a quest to safely capture a bookshop mouse named Basil and a ‘Death Cafe’ meeting after close to eat cakes shaped like headstones.
At the Park on the Edge of the Country is an example of the variety of poetic forms and devices a poet can use while maintaining a single theme or message throughout their work. This collection is moved by image and identity, circling closer to its goal as it asks for meaning from itself.