Seven Days in June

“I don’t miss drinking,” he continued. “But I do miss having a crutch. At first, I’d look at sober people like, damn, y’all really out here feeling everything?”

nostalgic for it before it had even ended

Shane was a literary star. He’d written only four novels—Eight, See Saw, Eat in the Kitchen, and Lock the Door on Your Way In. But they were canon. The setting was always the same nameless neighborhood crippled by devastating poverty.

His characters were whimsical, vivid, practically mythologized humans. And through ecstatic attention to detail, emotion, and nuance, he artfully manipulated readers into becoming so invested in his characters’ every thought that fifty pages would go by before they realized that there was no plot. None. Just a girl named Eight, who lost her keys. But they’d weep from the beauty of it. Eight could’ve seen a dude shot dead in the street while she was locked out, but readers would’ve cared only about her.

Shane tricked his readers into seeing humanity, not circumstance. You walked away from his books dazed, wondering how he’d managed to rip out your heart before you realized what was happening.