The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares is very well written. As are the very well written reviews. Very. None of the stories are especially nightmarish or memorable, save one. I've read all of her work since college. I have championed her and been devoted to it. The last story Hole in the Head, is the nightmarish one because of the facts on trepanning. So if you're going in for brain surgery anytime, I recommend you read this first. And send a copy of it to everybody you know. And any kind of surgery actually.

Her stories here are a half-hearted performance. We go to her writing, because it's enjoyable to read and challenging. I think many of us also read her because we are in pain. She writes about that so eloquently, mystically.

Her book to writers is Faith of a Writer. It gives us everything , especially beginning writers, need of comfort and wisdom. But....there's this JCO which she uses in her fiction.

And in public appearances and finds it amusing that we think of her a certain way, dark, alone, mysterious, awkward and shy, of course it is because she paints herself that way in everything in fiction she writes, for instance, the cameo of her in her novel them. In non-fiction she is herself. If this is an act, who is she in A Widow's Story?

The tragic horrible death of her husband and how she survives is a cataclysmic thing, a study in sadness and bravery epic. I lost my deepest friend two weeks before I read this book. It saved my life. Unfortunately. Cold comfort. However, I can't tell her JCO character from Rosamund Smith, a pen name or others. Perhaps she does not know this is really her. Another writer I love did this sometime ago.

He wrote a passage of such sadness and then told us cold bloodedly how he made us feel what we did, as I was weeping over it. I felt like I had been hit in the stomach by a trusted friend. I don't trust him anymore. So yes in writing there are gimmicks.

Sadly writers can be very cruel. But if a minute of a lasting joke can tear a career apart, I don't care. In one of her stories the first line is a huge profanity. It was so funny and shocking. In the novella Corn Maiden, there is another opening of profanity. This time it's not funny. It's just tiresome. Some writers you entrust with your heart.

She writes deeply and complexly. And some of it is absolutely transcendent. But I approach it with a distance now. Writers owe us nothing. Not even their words. The pressure she faces, the hard work must be immense.

The vastness of it. The intense fearless writer of her. It's just that when a person you admire has told you a story that seems as though (s)he wrote it inside your bones, then turns around and laughs in your face, I'm sorry, but then they do owe you something. Nobody likes to get screwed over. Not by anyone.

A person can be a fine writer. Period. Watch your step, though. Read her journal for how far in depth she goes for one novel. Her Smith persona writes mystery novels about twins, so maybe like all of us, she is not sure most understandably who she is and is only playing games in her own expensive mind.