As With All Forms Of Liberation, Of

But She Was Seventeen Now And Not Actually Dumb. She Knew That You Could Love Somebody More Than Anything And Still Not Love The Person All That Much, If You Were Busy With Other Things.

It Seems To Me Self-evident That If You Have A Life, Things Happen In It, And Certain Things Do Change; Certain Things End. People You Know Die.

Life, In Her Experience, Had A Kind Of Velvet Luster. You Looked At Yourself From One Perspective And All You Saw Was Weirdness. Move Your Head A Little Bit, Though, And Everything Looked Reasonably Normal.

Family's The One Thing You Can't Change. You Can Cover Yourself With Tattoos. You Can Get A Grapefruit-sized Ring Going Through Your Earlobe. You Can Change Your Name. You Can Move To A Different Continent. But You Cannot Change Who Your Parents Were, And Who Your Siblings Are, And Who Your Children Are.

Nell Zink Is A Writer Of Extraordinary Talent And Range. Her Work Insistently Raises The Possibility That The World Is Larger And Stranger Than The World You Think You Know.