Escape Artists
PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Talia on July 25, 2012, 01:23:08 PM
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PodCastle 218: Insect Joy (http://podcastle.org/2012/07/24/podcastle-218-insect-joy/)
by Caspian Gray (http://caspiangray.livejournal.com/).
Read by Julie Hoverson of 19 Nocturne Boulevard (http://nineteennocturne.wordpress.com/).
Originally appeared in Interzone (http://ttapress.com/interzone/).
The crickets started screaming after Luis came back from the war. Theirs was the lowest form of communication; they did not so much exchange ideas as alternate between different ways of expressing alarm. When Amy noticed they were out of water gel and took their bowl to refill it, they screamed. When she sprinkled calcium powder on their food, they screamed. When she cleaned the tiny bodies of their dead brethren out of the cage, they screamed.
It was tiresome.
Outside, now that each night brought frost, the world was quiet. There were the last dying flutters of cecropia moths, blown along the sidewalk like dead leaves. The swarms of ladybugs were already burrowed deep into schools and churches and people’s homes, where occasionally she heard them chirring to each other. She’d met a single dragonfly, perhaps the last one of November, perched in the sun on her front door, but that dragonfly was too tired or too old to speak.
Only the feeder crickets at the store were still trying to express their mangled lives.
Rated R for sex, language and adult themes.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s PodCastle! (http://media.rawvoice.com/podcastle/media.libsyn.com/media/podcastle/PC218_InsectJoy.mp3)
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Just finished listening to insect joy and I have to say that I'm feeling very bleh about the whole thing. While I understand the theme of sacrifice in the story and can appreciate that we journey through our lives making those types of decisions and sacrifices every day I wasn't immersed enough in the story to really care about the sacrifices that they were making.
I will admit some morbid fascination with the image of an "angry" penis, but I suppose that says more about my issues then anything else.
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Rocket!!! :'(
I didn't really like this story, and I am pretty sure it was because I didn't like the characters. At all. Amy was a whiny little thing, and Luis was just a dick. Rich was a moron and the other female clerk at the pet store was a ditz. The taking of innocent creatures lives to give that jerk the ability to walk again was an awful sacrifice. If I were a neighbor, and my beloved kitties were killed for that...well, this is too nice a place for me to type what I would want to do. (I may be singing a different tune if it were to save the life of a good person, but to allow an ass to walk, nope.)
That said, I still appreciate the story, and LOVE baby chicks!!! Any chance for pictures, Dave??
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I didn't care for this one much. I think danooli hit at my reason pretty well--none of the characters were likeable. Not every story has to have likeable characters, but I like to be able to root for someone, and in this case the only creature I cared about was Rocket so I was not pleased when he died. I certainly didn't think the sacrifice of his life and the life of the other animals was at all worth this man's legs.
I wonder if she kills just lower animals or if she kills people too, ones who were not involved in the exchange? I would find that more fitting, as she would end up in the middle of an investigation of what might or might not be perceived as a mass murder.
I liked the core premise of being able to communicate with animals, but how it's mostly consigned to insects who just scream constantly. I imagine mice and other small animals would be the same way.
So... where does the title come from? The "insect" is the crickets apparently, but what does their joy have to do with it? All they experienced was terror.
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Yeah, pretty much what danooli and HueItzcoati said. I have quite a number of close friends who are either "lifers" or in the various reserves, so the struggle of soldiers to adjust back into "normal" life and society is very dear to my heart. That said, while the resultant relationship difficulties were emphasized to the point of breaking, there was nothing in the story to indicate that they had been a happy couple before he was deployed. I found myself wondering why Amy didn't just leave Luis since there didn't seem to be any sort of prior relationship to fight for. Even a few sentences letting the reader know that Amy really missed the old fun-loving, warm, tender Luis would have been enough to help me root for their relationship to recover.
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Yeah, pretty much what danooli and HueItzcoati said. I have quite a number of close friends who are either "lifers" or in the various reserves, so the struggle of soldiers to adjust back into "normal" life and society is very dear to my heart. That said, while the resultant relationship difficulties were emphasized to the point of breaking, there was nothing in the story to indicate that they had been a happy couple before he was deployed. I found myself wondering why Amy didn't just leave Luis since there didn't seem to be any sort of prior relationship to fight for. Even a few sentences letting the reader know that Amy really missed the old fun-loving, warm, tender Luis would have been enough to help me root for their relationship to recover.
Yes! I never doubted that he had always been a jackass. Even a small indication that their relationship had been good before his trauma would've helped me like this story a lot.
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Even a few sentences letting the reader know that Amy really missed the old fun-loving, warm, tender Luis would have been enough to help me root for their relationship to recover.
There were a couple of lines where she remembered how happy they had been with her riding her boyfriend's shoulders and how much potential they had back then.
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Yeah, pretty much what danooli and HueItzcoati said. I have quite a number of close friends who are either "lifers" or in the various reserves, so the struggle of soldiers to adjust back into "normal" life and society is very dear to my heart. That said, while the resultant relationship difficulties were emphasized to the point of breaking, there was nothing in the story to indicate that they had been a happy couple before he was deployed. I found myself wondering why Amy didn't just leave Luis since there didn't seem to be any sort of prior relationship to fight for. Even a few sentences letting the reader know that Amy really missed the old fun-loving, warm, tender Luis would have been enough to help me root for their relationship to recover.
Yes! I never doubted that he had always been a jackass. Even a small indication that their relationship had been good before his trauma would've helped me like this story a lot.
Yup. I have loads of sympathy for wounded service people, but this was a toxic relationship.
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Even a few sentences letting the reader know that Amy really missed the old fun-loving, warm, tender Luis would have been enough to help me root for their relationship to recover.
There were a couple of lines where she remembered how happy they had been with her riding her boyfriend's shoulders and how much potential they had back then.
Those lines didn't make an impression on me I guess. Which could be bad listening on my part. But I think it could've been emphasized more.
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Even a few sentences letting the reader know that Amy really missed the old fun-loving, warm, tender Luis would have been enough to help me root for their relationship to recover.
There were a couple of lines where she remembered how happy they had been with her riding her boyfriend's shoulders and how much potential they had back then.
Those lines didn't make an impression on me I guess. Which could be bad listening on my part. But I think it could've been emphasized more.
Based on how many people shared your sentiments you are probably onto something. It did take me a while to realzie they were a couple and not roomates or land lord/tennet to explain why she was there.
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Even a few sentences letting the reader know that Amy really missed the old fun-loving, warm, tender Luis would have been enough to help me root for their relationship to recover.
There were a couple of lines where she remembered how happy they had been with her riding her boyfriend's shoulders and how much potential they had back then.
Those lines didn't make an impression on me I guess. Which could be bad listening on my part. But I think it could've been emphasized more.
Based on how many people shared your sentiments you are probably onto something. It did take me a while to realzie they were a couple and not roomates or land lord/tennet to explain why she was there.
Hmm, I must have missed them somehow, thanks for pointing that out. Do you remember approximately when they came up?
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Minutes 15:55- 16:40
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As Dave mentioned in the outro, there's certainly some sacrificing/trading going on in this story; but one aspect of this sacrifice that he didn't mention (and other commenters here haven't mentioned) is that Amy doesn't know the price of what she's asking. (Which might be one reason why you may get some "Why not Pseudopod?" emails--the Faustian bargain/"I didn't know what I was bargaining for" is a well-worn horror trope.) As she notes at the end, if she had know Luis's legs would cost her Rocket's life, she wouldn't've taken the trade.
That makes it a little less interesting as a character study--this isn't the story of someone who will stop at nothing to get the one thing she wants--and a little more potent as metaphoric study. That is, the way I read it, the "I thought I was sacrificing X, but I ended up sacrificing Y" is very much a story of war in general and perhaps the US last few wars in particular.
As a story, I'm a little neutral about it, but leaning towards liking it. At the very least, as a dog owner, I thought the depiction of Rocket was very finely observed, play-bows, pack-mentality, and all.
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Even a few sentences letting the reader know that Amy really missed the old fun-loving, warm, tender Luis would have been enough to help me root for their relationship to recover.
There were a couple of lines where she remembered how happy they had been with her riding her boyfriend's shoulders and how much potential they had back then.
Those lines didn't make an impression on me I guess. Which could be bad listening on my part. But I think it could've been emphasized more.
Based on how many people shared your sentiments you are probably onto something. It did take me a while to realzie they were a couple and not roomates or land lord/tennet to explain why she was there.
I was also a bit confused after Luis got upset that Amy didn't say hello to him before she took Rocket ( :'( ) for his walk. I had just figured, incorrectly it turned out, that if she had a significant other, we would have heard about him before that.
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As Dave mentioned in the outro, there's certainly some sacrificing/trading going on in this story; but one aspect of this sacrifice that he didn't mention (and other commenters here haven't mentioned) is that Amy doesn't know the price of what she's asking.
I disagree, slightly. She didn't know the scope of the sacrifice, that much is obvious. But I believe she bought 1,000 +/- crickets with the sole intention of killing them so Luis could walk. Probably so she could leave him, guilt free. I'll repeat myself, I really didn't like the characters in this story; well, except for Rocket as Unblinking mentioned. He was cool ;D Although, if it was the authors intention for us to not like them...Spot on, Caspian Gray!
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Minutes 15:55- 16:40
Okay, upon re-listening I can tell why I dismissed that section as support of their previous "good" relationship. My summation of it is Amy feels nostalgic about how they were young, stupid a**holes (her word) together before he was deployed. Others can certainly take more stock in that than I do, but for me that is scant evidence.
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I disagree, slightly. She didn't know the scope of the sacrifice, that much is obvious. But I believe she bought 1,000 +/- crickets with the sole intention of killing them so Luis could walk. Probably so she could leave him, guilt free. I'll repeat myself, I really didn't like the characters in this story; well, except for Rocket as Unblinking mentioned. He was cool ;D Although, if it was the authors intention for us to not like them...Spot on, Caspian Gray!
I more or less agree with that. With the addition that she knew damned well ahead of time that she was in territory she didn't fully understand, and wasn't at all wary about the cost. "Hey look at all the energy stored up in that atomic nucleus. I could use some of that energy. I'll just cut it to let it loose." So for me I think that she should've either been wary enough not to try it, or at least worked her way up to such a large task. It's very possible that if she had refined her skill to a greater degree she could've had a greater effect with less cost--and it's not like there's any need for this to happen today instead of in a month or a few months. Instead she killed all the neighborhood's animals because she rushed.
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I wonder if the sacrificial dead included not only the insects, squirrels, dogs that were mentioned, or if the quiet night meant that some amount of nominally "higher", bipedal mammals were taken as vivification energy sources, too.
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I wonder if the sacrificial dead included not only the insects, squirrels, dogs that were mentioned, or if the quiet night meant that some amount of nominally "higher", bipedal mammals were taken as vivification energy sources, too.
I was wondering that too! If they were the only ones who survived in blocks and blocks, they'll probably have a lot of police and media attention soon.
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Was not a fan of this one. Whatever sympathies I had for Amy drained away as she killed her dog (and all the other pets in the area). If this had been part of a prelude or origin story, it might have been servicable. But as it is, we're just left with two people we don't like and their senselessly murdered pet.
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Was not a fan of this one. Whatever sympathies I had for Amy drained away as she killed her dog (and all the other pets in the area). If this had been part of a prelude or origin story, it might have been servicable. But as it is, we're just left with two people we don't like and their senselessly murdered pet.
Yeah but that was the point. She had no idea that would happen - she certainly wasn't trying for that. How that will impact her life is left unspoken, but it will presumably be negative.
It was depressing, but I liked the story myself. I didn't find Amy all that whiny. The story had a sort of awkward feel to it, the way the characters interacted, their needs and flaws, that felt honest to me - kind of rough and messy the way real life can sometimes/often be.
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I disagree, slightly. She didn't know the scope of the sacrifice, that much is obvious. But I believe she bought 1,000 +/- crickets with the sole intention of killing them so Luis could walk.
Yeah, that's what I meant. Clearly she understands that this is a trade, but the fact that she doesn't understand the scope of the trade makes it horrific (to me), rather than, say, a character study of what Amy is willing to give up for love.
(Although I guess we do get that in its negative form: Amy is UNwilling to give up Rocket for Luis--so the fact that she accidentally does makes this tragic.)
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1) Dave, whenever you state in the intro that the author is a "funeral director's apprentice" OF COURSE people will wonder why it's not on Pseudopod!
2) People aren't gonna like the story where the dog dies. Unless it's Cujo or the Hound of the Baskervilles.
3) I found the open ending the most chilling part. Maybe I'm too conventional. Or maybe I just watched "Carnivale" too recently.
4) on a more serious note, I was wondering - and I think Dave was too, in the exit - about whether we are supposed to draw a parallel between the unwitting sacrifice Amy makes with the unwitting sacrifice the country as a whole makes with its wounded veterans.
I thought it *might* be a warning against expecting happy endings, but I think that's too simplistic.
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I am among those who didn't think much of this story. I kept asking myself about halfway through, "Why am I listening to this again? Does this story have a point? Where's it going?" I just ..well, wasn't impressed at all.
Now, that said, I have this to say: The next morning I went into the kitchen and was getting the coffee ready. I went to the fish tank, as I do every morning now, and had to pause as I looked at the fish who, by now, know the routine, and are ready, excited, waiting, all congregated up close, in one corner and the surface, eager, hungry, waiting for me, seeing the big blog beyond the tank who brings the sprinkles of food. I paused and thought, "Okay, I get it now..a little." I look at the fish differently in the mornings now.
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Bleah. I not only disliked every single character in this story, I actively wanted them all to die in flames. Except the dog. And you see what happened to him.
Moving right along to the NEXT story...
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This story drew me in due to the MC's ability to communicate or at least empathize with insects. I was interested to see where it went. However, where it went left me pretty flat.
But I REALLY enjoyed hearing Julie's voice here on PC. More Julie please. :)
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I didn't care for this story much. I pretty much agree with everyone else but also, I really didn't like the reader's character voices. Especially the main character, the Southern/Valley Girl accent was grating. I was happy there wasn't much dialogue. The reader has a beautiful voice but that particularly take on a Southern accent was distracting.
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I think it was an interesting story but... ooh, Rocket. That was the last thing I heard just before sitting at my desk Monday morning. Didn't make for a good start to the week. (I'm not blaming y'all for running it's just that something like that with dogs is always gonna affect me).
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I couldn't finish this story. I gave it until the first break-point (where we switch scenes from the pet shop to the MC's house) but it just didn't grab me. I didn't feel invested enough in the characters, and I don't think enough happened in the first part to get my attention. I'd probably be willing to read this in text form if it showed up in my feeds, but given my enormous podcast backlog, I have to be really strict about how much time I give each thing -- I unfortunately don't have time for a slow burn on anything longer than one commute (about 30 minutes, give or take traffic).
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I appreciated the theme of "a terrible price paid," but I think I would have found the story more meaningful if the character had known what she was getting into and made a terrible, irrevocably choice for the sake of her lover. Characters stumbling ass-backwards into sacrifice just doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't tell me anything about the character other than "she made a mistake in her ignorance."
My enjoyment of this story might have been hindered by the fact that I do own a bearded dragon and I did feed him crickets and those little f*ckers are awful. They stink. They chirp. They get everywhere. They are so God-damned stupid that they will actually drown in their own water bowls. I have zero sympathy for crickets. Their pain and joy means nothing to me. As a result, I wasn't horrified when their deaths started the narrator down the path of healing her lover.
The dog, though. That hurt. My best friend growing up was a standard poodle.
Anyway, kind of a mid-range story for me. Not awful, not great, not terribly meaningful, not enigmatic. Written well enough that I undesrtood what was going on, but not shining with poetry and truth.
Two out of five zeppelins, and a handful of dead, dead crickets.
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I appreciated the theme of "a terrible price paid," but I think I would have found the story more meaningful if the character had known what she was getting into and made a terrible, irrevocably choice for the sake of her lover. Characters stumbling ass-backwards into sacrifice just doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't tell me anything about the character other than "she made a mistake in her ignorance."
But isn't that the point -- that's like life? You start something with the best of intentions and it's not until you're right in the thick of things you discover the real cost? I think it's a rare situation where you fully understand the cost before proceeding.
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I appreciated the theme of "a terrible price paid," but I think I would have found the story more meaningful if the character had known what she was getting into and made a terrible, irrevocably choice for the sake of her lover. Characters stumbling ass-backwards into sacrifice just doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't tell me anything about the character other than "she made a mistake in her ignorance."
But isn't that the point -- that's like life? You start something with the best of intentions and it's not until you're right in the thick of things you discover the real cost? I think it's a rare situation where you fully understand the cost before proceeding.
But if that's the case, then it isn't a choice. It's an accident.
Or, rather, I feel that characters - and the character of real people, too - are defined by choices made with some understanding of the circumstances. What's interesting to me is the choices people make - and the prices they pay - when they think they understand the situation. What's also interesting to me are the mental vicissitudes that people are willing to put themselves through in order to avoid facing uncomfortable truths. These are interesting.
On the other hand, I get that unintended consequences can be a totally compelling thing. However, there's a fine line.
I get into my car, drive down the street, run into you, and you die. Your death is an unintended consequence of my driving, but it doesn't say a lot about my character. In fact, it doesn't say anything about my character. As they say: shit happens. This is not really a story (sorry).
I have a drink, get into my car, drive down the street, run into you, and you die. Your death is an unintended consequence of my driving, but there's more to the story. I rendered myself unsafe to drive before I got into the car. I probably have all sorts of fascinating narrative crap going on in my head. Why did I have that drink? Why did I get behind the wheel? How did I convince myself that it was going to be ok, even though I knew it was stupid? Your death is an unintended consequence of my driving, but it still says a lot about my character that you were killed. Again, sorry about that.
While the first story certainly happens in real life, I'm not all that interested in seeing it reflected in fiction. The second story has a lot more potential.
I think this story was very close to being exactly what I would have wanted. I would have liked to see the narrator given more of a chance to understand what she was doing. I would have liked for her to be given clearer warnings, and then I would have liked to see more of a glimpse into why she ignored those warnings. Then, when the story concludes and "justice" is done, and she is left in the wreckage of her choices, we have completion.
What we have now just felt like a sad joke, and the punchline is "bad things happen, and sometimes you never had a chance." And while that's true in life, I don't find it compelling in fiction. If the story was more of a tragedy, and the lesson was "be ruthlessly honest with yourself; your self-deceptions could lead you and others to grief," I would have found that more interesting.
But I totally admit that I am a bad choices junky. I come to fiction to see characters making bad choices. Even when the story ends well, I need to see lots of bad choices along the way. I understand that this isn't everyone's favorite aesthetic, but it is definitely mine.
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But I totally admit that I am a bad choices junky. I come to fiction to see characters making bad choices. Even when the story ends well, I need to see lots of bad choices along the way. I understand that this isn't everyone's favorite aesthetic, but it is definitely mine.
So I'm guessing that "The Axiom of Choice" was right up your alley?
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But I totally admit that I am a bad choices junky. I come to fiction to see characters making bad choices. Even when the story ends well, I need to see lots of bad choices along the way. I understand that this isn't everyone's favorite aesthetic, but it is definitely mine.
So I'm guessing that "The Axiom of Choice" was right up your alley?
Blew. My freaking. Mind.
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I have a drink, get into my car, drive down the street, run into you, and you die. Your death is an unintended consequence of my driving, but there's more to the story. I rendered myself unsafe to drive before I got into the car.
Well, if you take my view on it, it wasn't exactly an accident. Yes, she didn't KNOW that she would kill Rocket and the other animals, but if she'd taken the time to think about it she would've realized that she KNEW how little she knew, and wouldn't have jumped from one minor accidental transfer to a massive "let's fix everything" transfer without at least trying intermediate steps to gauge their effects. Maybe it's just my engineering experience that makes me fault her for that, but yes I do think much of the fault fell on her for rushing into something she knew she didn't understand.
To use your driving analogy, I don't see what she did the same way you did. To me this would be like so:
Woman invents a bicycle for the first time. She figures out how to ride it and realizes she can cover distances much more quickly than she could before. Woman is happy and excited about the future.
As a next step, woman invents mass transportation in the form of a bus, and drives in mountainous country with narrow icy winding mountain roads with no guard rails. Woman drives bus off the mountain, and kills 50 people. "What a tragedy," people said. "She couldn't have known how dangerous those roads were on a bus."
---"Okay I admit it's a bit of a stretch in the analogy, inventing the bus from seeing a bicycle and all, but more or less I think it makes my point. There was no time limit on giving him his walking legs back, so why didn't she take more caution? She should have. She didn't. And she paid for her arrogance and shortsightedness.
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I have a drink, get into my car, drive down the street, run into you, and you die. Your death is an unintended consequence of my driving, but there's more to the story. I rendered myself unsafe to drive before I got into the car.
Well, if you take my view on it, it wasn't exactly an accident. Yes, she didn't KNOW that she would kill Rocket and the other animals, but if she'd taken the time to think about it she would've realized that she KNEW how little she knew, and wouldn't have jumped from one minor accidental transfer to a massive "let's fix everything" transfer without at least trying intermediate steps to gauge their effects. Maybe it's just my engineering experience that makes me fault her for that, but yes I do think much of the fault fell on her for rushing into something she knew she didn't understand.
To use your driving analogy, I don't see what she did the same way you did. To me this would be like so:
Woman invents a bicycle for the first time. She figures out how to ride it and realizes she can cover distances much more quickly than she could before. Woman is happy and excited about the future.
As a next step, woman invents mass transportation in the form of a bus, and drives in mountainous country with narrow icy winding mountain roads with no guard rails. Woman drives bus off the mountain, and kills 50 people. "What a tragedy," people said. "She couldn't have known how dangerous those roads were on a bus."
---"Okay I admit it's a bit of a stretch in the analogy, inventing the bus from seeing a bicycle and all, but more or less I think it makes my point. There was no time limit on giving him his walking legs back, so why didn't she take more caution? She should have. She didn't. And she paid for her arrogance and shortsightedness.
Ethically, you are correct. I would view the woman as responsible for what ensues. Narratively, however, it doesn't really stick for me unless the person is given more clues, and/or more time is spent on their dawning realizations and efforts to not realize things that are inconvenient for their ambitions.
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This was a rarity - a podcastle story I really disliked. First, I'm not a big fan of stories where the only emotional tone is misery - I'm not saying that stories have to be positive, just that there has to be *something* else. Part of the problem was that I found the descriptions of the only other emotion really invoked in this story - anger - to be unconvincing. Second, I was consistently confused by how Amy's healing was supposed to work. In the first occasion, it involved already-dead crickets. In the second occasion, it involved the dog but nothing happened to him. In the third occasion, her powers were actively killing things.
So yeah, between finding the emotional core of this story unpleasant and unrewarding, and having issues with the actual plotline, this one just wasn't for me.
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This was a rarity - a podcastle story I really disliked. First, I'm not a big fan of stories where the only emotional tone is misery - I'm not saying that stories have to be positive, just that there has to be *something* else. Part of the problem was that I found the descriptions of the only other emotion really invoked in this story - anger - to be unconvincing. Second, I was consistently confused by how Amy's healing was supposed to work. In the first occasion, it involved already-dead crickets. In the second occasion, it involved the dog but nothing happened to him. In the third occasion, her powers were actively killing things.
So yeah, between finding the emotional core of this story unpleasant and unrewarding, and having issues with the actual plotline, this one just wasn't for me.
I was a little bit confused by that as well. The best I could guess is that together she and Rocket formed a conduit of sorts that could funnel lifeforce from one end to the other. The first time it happened the crickets had been smushed, but I figured that lifeforce hadn't actually dissipated yet, and so she was able to shift it.
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Huh. I may be among the few people who somewhat liked this story. My feelings are closer to Talia's in that the relationship the MC and Luis had was painfully awkward, which made the situation more real to me.
And yes, this is a poster-board story of what happens when you fool around with magic and you have no freakin clue with what you're doing. But for me, it was justified by the MC unwillingness to leave the situation she was in. Her wanting the salvage the situation, to put things back the way they were, made sense. True, she could have left, but I think the idea of dumping Luis, after all he had been through, was too much for her. Nevermind that Luis was a dick...
Guh. Gotta go pick up my son. Will edit this when I get back.
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I need to jump in here late and agree with LaShawn. I don't know why killing the dog makes everyone hate the story, I quite liked it. It made me sad, I was not happy the cute doggy died, but it was a good kind of sad that allowed me to enjoy the story even more. It's funny how we all have an even more visceral reaction to the death of animals in fiction compared to humans.
I was really touched by the story, and with how much of a dick Luis was, not even caring about all the dead animals, and how she really wished she could have kept the dog and lost him, on some emotional level anyway, well that was something I could sympathize with, and she loses the more loyal friend to fix the one that our society thinks she should value more. Maybe she should, who knows, but it is about the unhappiest miracle I've ever read about and I loved it.
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It's funny how we all have an even more visceral reaction to the death of animals in fiction compared to humans.
The death of pets, at least. To me, at least, when you take a pet you are committing to caring for that animal the best you can. Humans are generally going to have to make their own place in the world eventually, but not pets. So, yes, I generally do react more strongly to that.
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The imagery of the screaming of the crickets was stunning. Not surprisingly, I also loved "In Bloom".