I’m ordering Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping on Amazon right now. I feel like too many people whose taste I admire have recommended that book for me not to drop everything and read it immediately.
In the mean time, in the wicked time, my favorite fiction-crafting friend, Jen, has lent me Kelly Link’s collection Magic for Beginners that I’m snacking on. It houses one of my favorite short stories in the world, “Stone Animals.” I’m rereading that one this morning. It deals with the interesting disorder called pica. Also with straight up haunted statues.
The rabbits sat on either side of the front door. Two stone animals sitting on cracked, mossy haunches. They were shapeless, lumpish, patient in a way that seemed not worn down, but perhaps never really finished in the first place. There was something about them that reminded Henry of Stonehenge. Catherine thought of topiary shapes; The Velveteen Rabbit ; soldiers who stand guard in front of palaces and never even twitch their noses. Maybe they could be donated to a museum. Or broken up with jackhammers. They didn’t suit the house at all.
