la mouette rose

Any book that is written down to children, or with one nervous sideways eye on the author’s fellow adults, or with the belief that this is the kind of thing they like, cannot work and will not last. Children are not they, they are us. And this is why writing that succeeds with children often succeeds just as well with adults. Not because the latter are infantile or regressive, but because the true dilemmas of childhood are the dilemmas of the whole of life. Those of belonging and betrayal, the power of the group, and the courage it takes to be an individual. Of love, and lost, and learning what is it to be a human being. Let alone a good, brave, or honest one.

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid

Such black ironies are still much too common everywhere you turn in this bleeding, often broken country where every moral certainty was exiled long ago, and a visitor finds himself in a labyrinth of sorts, every path leading to a cul-de-sac.