Then she’s called back home from graduate school in California to be with her father as he dies.
She leaves home for what promises to be a splashy, important life. From such exceptional beginnings, Emma appears poised to leap into the mythic. As a teen, Emma and her friend Crystal even start a healing business called the Gentle Touch Society out of a McDonald’s. “A ten-day cold could be knocked down to a three-dayer, a poison-ivy rash could heal in a day, a dog-bite could scab overnight.” Soon, the people of Everton, her small New Hampshire town, are eager for her to lay hands upon them. With a touch, she can speed up the natural process of healing. While not quite Christlike in magnitude, Emma’s healing powers are nonetheless extraordinary. “ Charismata iamaton,” the midwife calls it “The Charm,” Emma’s motorcycle-riding, heavy metal-loving, poetry professor father calls it. Right out of the gate, the protagonist of Annie Hartnett’s new novel Unlikely Animals is performing miracles: Emma Starling, not a minute old, cures the midwife who delivers her of her sciatica.
0 kommentar(er)
