Saturday, June 12, 2010

Brown Dwarf in the National Post




In today's National Post, Jeet Heer raves about K.D. Miller's latest:

Miller uses the conventions of the detective novel but is concerned with more than just the bare-bones question of whodunit. Although she remains under-appreciated, she is one of Canada’s finest writers, able to probe deeper into the human heart than the best surgeon. Here, as in her earlier stories, Miller’s concern is with why people do what they do rather than just what they do. Miller has a keen sense for how mixed all human motives are, how closely aligned love and hate can be and how deceiving others always involves a bit of self-deception.

Aside from its literary resonance, the story of Brand and her childhood friend Jori Clement also tells us more about Ann Perry’s real life story than any of Perry’s own books. In both the actual Perry murder case and in Miller’s novel, young girls in the hothouse of early adolescence form an intense quasi-sexual friendship that leads them to behave in unexpected ways.


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