In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It's the story of a serial killer's crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity.

Wow. This makes grand central look like a bus stop in Buttfuck Nebraska.

The shining. It was a good name, a comforting name, because she had always thought of it as a dark thing.

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.

If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.