But violence was the antagonist in a story with a happy ending. It could never win, could it? But all around me violence actually was winning. That was the year when I first remember a child being shot over a trendy article of clothing; stories like that would soon become the background of my adolescence. And now danger swirled all around me—tales of razors slipped into candy apples, four-year-olds impaled with lawn darts. Stingley’s story pulled all this together and illuminated a new idea: Evil did win, sometimes—maybe most times. Bad things did happen, if only for the simple reason that
...more
