How do you know if you’re going to keep reading a piece of fiction?  Because the architecture of the sentences catches you up, makes you want to settle beside or gallop along with the phrasing, the hard or dreamy images concocted out of mere letters.  Because you like the character(s), want to hang around and find out what they do and say and how they get hurt and recover. Because you are given a path, something important in the balance, and you want to follow the trail to its heart. Because it’s another world that let you escape for  – or understand – yours.

We are creatures needing stories to survive.