A book that's too grim to recommend in the usual way is Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life (Picador), but it's unlikely I'll forget its relentless story or regret reading it.
This had been the relentless story line for the past several days, sucking up hours of airtime and he said/she said back-and-forth barbs from the two campaigns.
In her office on the island of Lilla Essingen, featuring a panoramic view of central Stockholm, Klintberg tells me about Bendjelloul's relentless foraging for stories.
It contains a very funny sendup of cable news networks' obsession with death and disaster, their relentless pursuit of stories about "stray acts of God and random nonsense": from airplanes blown out of the sky and Kennedy family woes to the sort of "not-the-news stories" (like a hunter killed by a gun, accidentally fired by his dog) that "end up as jokes on the Internet".
But now you've got Jennifer Aniston and Ashton Kutcher, and a relentless flow of stories that either reheat the glory years or squander their one good idea in a rush to beat the other movies who've also had it, hence the glut of copycat set-ups like No Strings Attached/Friends With Benefits, or The Bounty Hunter/One For The Money, or That Wedding Comedy Did Well So Here's Another One.
The anniversary of the signing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is something worth celebrating, but the relentless march of stories from women and men targeted because of their gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity or disability prove we have more work to do to end these heinous crimes.
"Even Silence Has an End" is as much a story of relentless introspection as it is a tale of survival.
These are stories of relentless cruelty, sadism, murder and vengeance.
Purdy's stories are relentless, in terms of their commitment to exploring alienation.
