Strangeness and Purpose
“I remember a college professor commenting that he was never sure Stephen Crane ‘knew what he was doing’ when he dropped all sorts of clues and oddness into his stories. I had the same thought while reading Barbara Comyns’s 1959 book, The Vet’s Daughter. Does all this strangeness serve a purpose? Does the bizarre ending mean something? Whether the answer is yes or no, I still enjoyed the novel more than anything I’ve read in months, and I’ve already ordered the rest of her books.”
—Sadie Stein, on the Paris Review Daily Blog
