A gift from some generous twinsers.

I think Gina Frangello is really a fantastic writer and she’s someone I learned about in Chicago from other Chicago writers and eventually heard read/met back in the earlier days of me living here.

Her previous novel “My Sister’s Continent” (read in 2006 on Mariko’s and my flight to Australia–you can search this page for “Frangello” ) was really dark and nasty and sadomasochistic and brutal and really, really good.

These stories are, if anything, even darker. To the point where, WOW, some of them were really tough to get through. Some I liked despite their nastiness…some were actually too cruel for me, very hard to deal with.

I would highly recommend her novel–if you can handle the darkness–but I would tread lightly around these stories. And if you’re in a bad, depressed, emotional frame of mind, good heavens, people, do NOT read them then.