On one hand, I could have counted the books about same-sex romances and suicide that were available to me as a young reader twenty-five years ago. Not that the two themes necessarily coexist in the same work (as they do, for instance, in Skim and Monoceros), but each of the
Perhaps Hélène is not a likely hero. She is "only eight years old, a bit florid in colour, with bluish veins on a body that weighed twenty-three kilos, holding back a mind that was always trying to run off to faraway, pitiless realms". Oscar sounds like a more heroic name,
Sometimes the slimmest books are the ones that take the most time to read, demand the most focus, insist on a cup of coffee rather than a glass of wine. Stella Sandford's How to Read Beauvoir struck that alarm bell for me. All the more loudly as I have not.
Just as "Jesse and Meribeth" seems to be a story about MaryBeth but really reveals so much more about Jessie herself, "Eskimo" appears to be about all the people on the plane with Mary Jo, but it's really all about Mary Jo. Nonetheless, it begins with talk of the passengers
"Being 16 is officially the worst thing I've ever been." That's Kimberly Keiko Cameron (aka Skim) speaking. "Why do the students call you Skim?" her English teacher, Ms Archer asks. "Because I'm not," Skim answers. Adolescence is such a horrid time: you're called what you're not, you want
