dumbfoundry

Halfway through "A House at the Edge of Tears," Khoury-Ghata reveals, "I write my first poem, the same night, with your pen, on the page that you hadn't been able to fill." The night in question is the one upon which her brother is first taken away to an asylum, after which he stops writing for good. If plot links event to consequence, then this novel is also about how and why Venus Khoury-Ghata and both of her sisters became writers. (Her sister May Menassa wrote a novel, published in Lebanon, that Venus Khoury-Ghata describes as a "double" to this one.) "I write the poems he could no longer write," she says. "We hope the dead poet applauds us from his grave."

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