Exquisite Words

The opening of Breakfast with the Ones You Love by Eliot Fintushel is a hard-working bit of prose: it establishes the narrator as young and female while also raising lots of curiosity. It’s a terrific hook for a terrific book.

If you want to be safe, a person like myself, you have to kill your face. Otherwise people get their hooks in you, which, who needs it? I already killed my face by the age of twelve. Problem is, my tits invaded. I tried not eating, which I hear stops tits in their tracks, but I couldn’t keep it up. In spite of everything, there is something in you that wants to keep you alive. It’s like a disease that you just can’t shake, no matter how hard you try. At least you can kill your face, see? Me, I can kill people too. I can kill them whenever I want to.

Punchy, mmm? Here’s the cover: