It's hard to write a better first line than this one, from Howard Norman's latest novel, Next Life Might Be Kinder: “After my wife, Elizabeth Church, was murdered by the bellman Alfonse Padgett in the Essex Hotel, she did not leave me.”
Whether Elizabeth is haunting the narrator of this book, or whether he's imagining her, doesn't matter much in the end. This exploration of loss isn't about solving mysteries, but exploring them.
My review ran in The Washington Post today.
winner of the John C. Zacharis Award from Ploughshares
About Me
- Carole Burns
- I am a reviewer and interviewer for The Washington Post. My story collection, The Missing Woman, published by Parthian Books, won the 2015 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. My non-fiction book, Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything in Between (Norton 2008), was based on interviews with 43 writers. Co-founder of the xx women's writing festival in Cardiff, I am Head of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton.
Off the Page
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