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August 21, 2012

"Ohlin’s stories suffer hyperglycemic shock because she’s incapable of mustering the requisite insulin."

Her sensibility clings either to calamity (homicides, heart attacks, car wrecks, missing persons, a drowning death, a drug overdose, testicular cancer)
or to affected stupefaction (the sudden arrival of a brother given up for adoption, unplanned pregnancies, the mysterious stranger). A sensibility of that sort — schooled not in Austen but in Susan Lucci — invariably collapses into sentimentality, and no sentimentalist has ever written a potent prose. -- ‘Inside’ and ‘Signs and Wonders,’ by Alix Ohlin

Posted by gerardvanderleun at August 21, 2012 7:24 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

The reviewer spent the first paragraph preening, prancing, and posing. After that I quit.

Posted by: chuck at August 21, 2012 8:07 PM

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