THE FORCE OF SUCH BEAUTY by Barbara Bourland - CrimeReads 'In Plain Sight: Barbara Bourland on Writing Under the Surface'

Essay by Barbara Bourland

CrimeReads | July 19, 2022

Lately I have needed novels that not only keep but wholly command my attention, which means most books are out. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth for a tender friendship or the patience to follow a trail to a dead body. I can’t bear to hope for an alternate universe—and I don’t want to read about the one I’m currently in, either. None of the usual formats are even remotely sufficient. I need to be captured, made into an active reader, solve a puzzle from the get-go in a world that looks like one thing but is gradually revealed to be another. I want tricks of the light, sleight of hand—anything that keeps my eyes on the ball. I want to follow a primary narrative underwritten with a heretofore invisible girding, doubling or tripling the meaning of everything that came before it. To sense the mystery right up front—then never quite catch it, not until the last page.

Coincidentally, this is also what I try to write.

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