A Little Light Reading (and Plenty of Heavy if That’s Your Thing)
Reviews and More (but No Green Reflecting-Pool Algae)
WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW of BOOKS
From Marcie Geffner’s WIRB review of All Us Saints:
Katherine Packert Burke’s contemporary gothic novel, All Us Saints, portrays the tormented lives of four adult siblings almost two decades after three teenaged girls were killed inside their home. With a large cast of dramatis personae and a minimalistic plot, the author relies on a theatrical, locked-room structure, creepy images, and themes related to gender, sexuality, and violence to hold the story together.
On the evening of May 31, 2011, Calla St. Cloud, a creatively blocked New York playwright, her younger brother, James, a video-store clerk, and James’ girlfriend, Heather, arrive at the St. Cloud home in a small town in Virginia. The place is owned by Calla and James’ elder sister, Edna, a local photographer whose career has stalled. The other occupants are Edna’s husband, Roger, author of Doll Parts: Isolation, Transvestism, and the St. Cloud Family Murders, a true-crime book about the tragedy, and their daughter, Wren.
Shut inside the house, the family extinguishes lit candles one by one while Roger reads a script that reenacts the horrific events that occurred on the same night 19 years earlier.
Read more HERE.