#AMREADING MEGHAN TIFFT, THE LONG FIRE. FUNNY, BIZARRE, AND EMOTIONALLY RESONANT.

That’s what the blurb says, and yes it would be funny if it weren’t so sad, and maybe eating the pages of a book is a bizarre way of digesting content, but otherwise it sounded pretty realistic (that is, familiar) to me:

• Silence. I had the feeling he wanted to say something more, and I raised my eyebrows for him to go ahead. I waited, watching the muscle in his jaw poke out as he clamped the words down, and for another few seconds we stood there, trapped inside the rising pressure of his silence.
• All kinds of crazy. A long line of crazies and quacks, people with circuits loose and chips on their should, people living in the moral and mental gray, twisted but functional, not committable, delinquent and duplicitous, shameless and shifty.
• The news. The original horror story, the one that leaves us stuck in the murky landscape of fear and uncertainty…Every night we return for the latest installment, eager for new twists, different angles, fresh hints and allegation – the facts dubious, the rumours tempting, the silences damning…the newscasters, those clean and attractive mannequins sitting complicit and exempt at once, a placid skyline behind them.