Characters like wee sisters offer unexpected gratification along Burns’s dark timeline of events.
John Decker
Daily Arts Writer
Books
Call it corny, call it meta, but “Becoming” is a book about building ourselves; it built me by proving that this journey never stops.
The content itself seemed at times more flash than substance, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Hopefully, though, the mix of enthusiasm, relief and tenacity will be a welcome catharsis and will resonate with anyone out there who’s interested in turning to poetry as a way to get through finals.
It taught me the universality of loneliness and empathy, the capacity to lift and be lifted by others.
Part of the joy of reading ‘I Might Regret This’ is the scramble to follow along.
An ending should be embraced, not shied away from.
Havrilesky’s project is simple in theory, but fascinatingly nuanced in practice: to diagnose our shared cultural values, anxieties, obsessions and illusions in order to better understand the way they influence our individual emotional landscapes.
Place devours cultural schisms, splintering them wide open for the world’s eye to behold.
Titles don’t only draw us into the work. They also fix our attention upon fewer words, and thereby propel us to consider the convention that builds the work up and makes it beautiful: its language.