At the end of Part One, I was crying on my kitchen floor, wearing a respirator mask and talking to an opossum with eyes as big as silver dollars who was under the house along with a family of dead rats: March 28 A beautiful, warm day but all that means to me is that  Read the Rest…

Feb 5 I hear scratching and scurrying sounds in the ceiling above my bed. It must be birds on the roof. Feb 10 I find a pile of sunflower seed shells dribbling from a bag of bird seed in the sun room. Outside the door is a fat squirrel innocently nibbling under the outdoor bird  Read the Rest…

You know sometimes you hear a noise in your house that you can’t identify? But one cat opens an eye and another one yawns. The third lifts his head up, but none of them summon a sense of danger or even curiosity. And so everyone relaxes. An hour later you find the shower curtain has  Read the Rest…

I had an odd relation to this novel. In the beginning I liked it more than I did when I’ve tried to read it before. Then I thought it stupid. Then the character Sam Weller appeared and I kept reading just to see what he would say next. Then the narrative got tiresome. I took  Read the Rest…