#jane-borden

#jane-borden

I find England ugly...I hate England; the weather is like a jail sentence...the food in England is like a jail sentence.

Didion describes San Bernadino County as 'the country of the teased hair and the Capris and the girls for whom all life's promise comes down to a waltz-length white wedding dress and the birth of a Kimberly or a Sherry or a Debbi and a Tijuana divorce and a return to hairdressers' school.'

From November 1909 until August 1912, an unknown assailant - or assailants - zigzagged across southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas. Many Black families were slaughtered in their homes under the cover of darkness. An ax - the telltale weapon - was almost always found in the bloody aftermath. All but one of the scenes were located within a mile of the Southern Pacific Railroad's Sunset Route. In each case, a mother and child were always among the victims.

Thatcher rose to power on the back of a campaign to Make Britain Great Again-a promise to reverse the previous two decades of austerity, imperial contraction, and stagnating modernization. By 1979, the country was undeniably in decline-not just materially but on a more ineffable level, too. Divested of the unifying effect of global superpower status, the increasingly dis-United Kingdom's common identity was now an open, and anxious, question.

For those unfamiliar with the beloved heroine, Samantha is one of the first three historical characters introduced by American Girl in 1986. Samantha, Swedish immigrant Kirsten and WWII homefront heroine Molly demonstrated courage, compassion and resilience. Along with an 18-inch doll, each 9-year-old character was featured in a series of easy chapter books; kids could follow each fictional story as well as the historical context surrounding it.

You are leaving work, your suit still damp from the morning's downpour, the skin on your palms peeling. You are clutching two supermarket bags, tins of cream soup and tuna knocking against one another. The rain is hard and your anorak is cheap. You are on your way to Stockbridge, to your parents' house, which only your father inhabits now that your mother is gone.

We are initiated into a world in which historically accurate foodstuffs can be ordered online a half oyster shell, the exposed flesh shining as if with the freshest brine, is 31.25 for a single piece and begin to understand one of the most striking things about this novel: its insistence upon detail, its utter specificity, set against a deliberate lack of specificity regarding the larger details that the reader's mind naturally itches to fill in.