Teaser Tuesday - Jun 14

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Dozens of small lengths of what looked like miniature wainscoting were lined up on top of it.
A little strange, Fenerman thought, but it doesn't make the man a murderer.

from Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. I book I'd encourage you to read - if you haven't already - but it's a book you'll either love or hate! Here's part of the Guardian review

The Lovely Bones is a determined reiteration of innocence, a teeth-gritted celebration of something not dismembered or shattered at all, but continuous: the notion of the American family unit, dysfunctional, yes, but pure and good nonetheless. It's a celebration that is hard-won, often vivid, sometimes moving, comic and sweet,

- though contrary to other parts of that review I thought the book increased its grip on you as you read it.

Seeing clearly

I was given, for Christmas, a copy of Chase Twichell's collection of poems 'Dog Language' a series which observe loss in particular the dying and death of her father. Very clear, well observed writing you can't look away. Here's 'Vestibule':

What etiquette holds us back
from more intimate speech,
especially now, at the end of the world?
Can’t we begin a conversation
here in the vestibule,
then gradually move it inside?
What holds us back
from saying things outright?
We’ve killed the earth.
Yet we speak of other things.
Our words should cauterize
all wounds to the truth.

And this section from an earlier poem in the collection 'Watertown':

Grandma had a hundred-year-old
jade tree on the piano.
I'm possessed by a need
to have one exactly like it--
coins of green water,
bark like elephant hide.
Hers had a glazed pot,
a stone turtle.
I want that turtle.

wanting something from down the ages which, maybe, is no more.
There's a review of the collection by the poet Matthew Thorburn. It is published in the UK by Bloodaxe