made an interesting discovery: what failed as poetry succeeded marvelously as prose. The capricious line breaks were annoying as hell, but Hopkins’ attempt to write something poem-shaped had the salutary effect of producing incredibly tight and evocative sentences, not a word wasted.

So much so that when her sister writes, telling Pattyn that their father has started beating his younger children, you fully expect that Pattyn is going to kick ass and take names.

I do demand that the plot twists, especially the drastic ones, be explicable upon careful re-examination of the story, and that tragic endings be justifiable, thematically, philosophically, geographically, whatever. Just so long as there’s a reason.