Campbell Andrews > Recent Status Updates

on 106 we learn her landline doesn’t work.

that seems more a page 50 drop to me. how long’s it gonna be before she needs a phone, another hundred?

80 pages and the inciting incident is still to come?

I know I'm a guy and everything and I know I'm no Manhattanite. but the lineage thing seems overplayed: does new money really care that somebody's mom is a mail-order bride? having a hard time seeing how this doesn't make her more interesting, not scandalous.

in another life all I do is read baseball histories

not sure how I hit on this. but I like to read effervescent stuff too.

Breezily told, but 100 pages from the end there shouldn't be this much exposition.

“For many believers, Christianity contains two essential elements: certain doctrines about who God is and how he acted in the world through Jesus; and a series of rules as to when, and with whom, a person may have sex.”

wow, Mr. Thornbury. I will quote you.

Larry knew Oingo Boingo?

"Leon Russell...had taken to preaching during his concerts... but didn't really have an interest in God. What interested him was 'the energy level and communication prowess he had observed in black gospel churches, where the preachers seemed to be able to control the response of their congregations with voice inflections and gesticulations.'"

in the first decade of the 20th century saloon license fees made up 22% of Chicago's revenue

in 1888 Ireland sent a group of elite athletes over as ambassadors for traditional Irish sports to the diaspora of emigres

I wondered if I was being roger ackroyd'd

"Here we go again to do what we do" is /just/ the kind of thing people say when they go to a lot of funerals

a little Time and Again, hmm???

I wonder if she's ever tempted to write these books-within-books

gets a little Dennis Miller with the references but they’re so specific I don’t mind

worlds within a world. she's so GOOD at this, establishing the specificity and richness of her characters' obsessions without leaning on cultural markers or references as indicators

nice haunted-house, trapped-guests scenario. very Christieish.

getting Secret History vibes-- did from Special Topics too. hope she punctures it just as much, I hate The Secret History

I do question the references, a contemporary 19-year-old dropping Kurt Cobain and Madonna.

the other day in NYC my friends' 17-year-old sat two tables away from Julia Roberts and didn't know who she was

there are Moon Pies in my book too!

her little alternate histories are a hallmark, love em

"Madonna threw up all over Cyndi Lauper"

already a + on voice. been a long time since I myself was a YA but I can appreciate the audience

The church took on their expenses. Wow. I hope my church would find it within itself to do the same

the mass on 178-9 is by itself worth the whole book. beautiful, and captures a species of religious experience almost never encountered in contemporary fiction