Mercury

This book, which may remind you of Alice Hoffman's ability to make magic out of common life, is the kind of novel that will live inside you for the rest of your life. I wish all fiction were this good.

A wonderful novel. Really well written and with fascinating, quirky characters: a girl with mercury poisoning; a teacher who doesn't have a place to live and sneaks around sleeping in the high school at night; a woman who runs a tour boat that sinks and drowns a lot of people. It kept me reading. And Holladay really evokes the place too: the lakeside community with all its characters and its history. I read her story chosen by Stephen King for the O Henry Prize collection a couple of years ago and this has the same unusual perspectives. It's the kind of writing that makes you see life from a different angle after you've read it.