The Brutal Telling

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Once again, this book is the result of a whole lot of help from a whole lot of people. I want and need to thank Michael, my husband, for reading and rereading the manuscript, and always telling me it was brilliant. Thank you to Lise Page, my assistant, for her tireless and cheery work and great ideas. To Sherise Hobbs and Hope Dellon for their patience and editorial notes.

I want to thank, as always, the very best literary agent in the world, Teresa Chris. She sent me a silver heart when my last book made the New York Times bestseller list (I also thought I’d just mention that!). Teresa is way more than an agent. She’s also a lovely, thoughtful person.

I’d also like to thank my good friends Susan McKenzie and Lili de Grandpré, for their help and support.

And finally I want to say a word about the poetry I use in this book, and the others. As much as I’d love not to say anything and hope you believe I wrote it, I actually need to thank the wonderful poets who’ve allowed me to use their works and words. I adore poetry, as you can tell. Indeed, it inspires me—with words and emotions. I tell aspiring writers to read poetry, which I think for them is often the literary equivalent of being told to eat Brussels sprouts. They’re none too enthusiastic. But what a shame if a writer doesn’t at least try to find poems that speak to him or her. Poets manage to get into a couplet what I struggle to achieve in an entire book.

I thought it was time I acknowledged that.

In this book I use, as always, works from Margaret Atwood’s slim volume Morning in the Burned House. Not a very cheerful title, but brilliant poems. I’ve also quoted from a lovely old work called The Bells of Heaven by Ralph Hodgson. And a wonderful poem called “Gravity Zero” from an emerging Canadian poet named Mike Freeman, from his book Bones.

I wanted you to know that. And I hope these poems speak to you, as they speak to me.