As awful as crime can be, it's what happens afterward - the struggling to get out of bed, to put one foot in front of the other - that alters people.
Karin SlaughterRead
Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.
Interpretation
Crime writing reveals uncomfortable truths about society.
Karin Slaughter's quote suggests that effective crime writing serves as a reflection of reality, illuminating the darker aspects of the human experience and society. By engaging with these stories, readers confront unsettling truths about their own world, allowing for deeper reflection and understanding of the complexities of life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a literary discussion about the role of crime fiction in understanding societal issues.
As awful as crime can be, it's what happens afterward - the struggling to get out of bed, to put one foot in front of the other - that alters people.
Reading is exercise for our brains in the guise of pleasure. Books give us insight into other people, other cultures. They make us laugh. They make us think. If they are really good, they make us believe that we are better for having read them.
It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.
My last vivid boyhood fright from books came when I was 15; I was visiting my uncle and aunt in Greenwich, and, emboldened by my success with 'The Waste Land,' I opened their copy of 'Ulysses.' The whiff of death off those remorseless, closely written pages overpowered me. So: back to soluble mysteries, and jokes that were not cosmic.
I’ve always believed that as an author, I do 50% of the work of storytelling, and the reader does the other 50%. There’s no way I can control the story you tell yourself from my book. Your own experiences, preferences, prejudices, mood at the moment, current events in your life, needs and wants influence how you read my every word.
He's a great writer. If I didn't think so I wouldn't have tried to kill him... I was the champ and when I read his stuff I knew he had something. So I dropped a heavy glass skylight on his head at a drinking party. But you can't kill the guy. He's not human.
I can think of no other writer who so thoroughly embodies the Jamesian spirit as Alison Lurie. Like him she can excavate all the possibilities of a theme. Like his, her books seem long, unbroken threads, seamless progressions of effects.
Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brave. I never get over being thankful for that - for the courage of my readers.
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