A Litany in Time of Plague is K.D. Miller's first collection of short fiction. The `plague' of the title story is a reference not only to AIDS but to its ironic companion, loneliness.
Miller's child characters are like little aliens dropped into a world that wavers from incomprehensible to bewildering, and yet, there is a knowing in them, an attunement to the `voice under the voice' that is disquieting. In `This Is Important' in Litany in Time of Plague, Arley is being questioned by her mother and a policeman about the man who followed her home from Brownies in his car. As she listens to them, she remembers the man `who came out of the dark. He was like a piece of the dark' and, unlike the policeman and her mother, talked to her `in his real voice,' and treated her with respect and courtesy. `Nobody ever talked to me like that before.... It was harder to say no thank you that time.' The dark stranger comes to represent the answer to all the mysteries the grownups withhold from her, the knowledge of good and evil, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Only when she hears through to the need and fear beneath his voice, does she turn away.
Each of the characters in the ten linked stories comes to the end of his or her spiritual rope. Kelly attends a Requiem Mass where she adds her and her ex-husband's names to a list of the dead. Arley pursues a dangerous fantasy down one dark alley after another. Raymond learns that his inability to love is exactly matched by his need to do just that.
外文書商品之書封,為出版社提供之樣本。實際出貨商品,以出版社所提供之現有版本為主。部份書籍,因出版社供應狀況特殊,匯率將依實際狀況做調整。
無庫存之商品,在您完成訂單程序之後,將以空運的方式為你下單調貨。為了縮短等待的時間,建議您將外文書與其他商品分開下單,以獲得最快的取貨速度,平均調貨時間為1~2個月。
為了保護您的權益,「三民網路書店」提供會員七日商品鑑賞期(收到商品為起始日)。
若要辦理退貨,請在商品鑑賞期內寄回,且商品必須是全新狀態與完整包裝(商品、附件、發票、隨貨贈品等)否則恕不接受退貨。