everything seems remarkably tame after the horror... the insanity of cormac mccarthy's Blood Meridian. i began guy vanderhaeghe’s The Englishman’s Boy expecting a continuation of the same grim landscape.. the same tension that permeated mccarthy's every pause, because once his work is read it reverberates in your skull with every blink of the eyes

what i found was pain of a different sort.. language that didn't claw at your heart but curled around it.. waiting