Reading as a Writer: Salt Bones

I picked up Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan on a whim at the library as something I intended to take on my family's annual summer trip up to Wisconsin. Given its heft, I assumed it would be a solid contribution towards the week away from phone signal and reliable internet.

Instead, it didn't even make it into the car.

Because I finished it within a day of getting it home from the library. Poor book never stood a chance of making it across state lines. Once I started reading, I just could not stop. It had been a while since anything had gripped me this way.

I think part of the draw was that for the most part, I've been reading a lot of formulaic books. I've gotten very deep into Nora Robert's In Death series since the spring, and when I'm not reading those, have been trying to keep my reading light with a series of romance novels. Salt Bones was described as magical realism, mystery, and family drama in some corners of the internet; and as a southwestern gothic thriller in others. It blurred all the genre lines I could identify.

That, and the prose itself kept me thinking about the protagonists even when I wasn't nose-deep in the book.

This book left me with a book hangover and the best kind of angst: could I write across genres like that? What genre did I want my stories to be? And, if google's classification of this novel is anything to go by: do I even have to choose?

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Audely Bensen Writes

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