The Importance of Being Edited. "Szabad", by Alan Duff and "Featherstone", by Kirsty Gunn. [review]

Abstract

Kirsty Gunn’s "Featherstone" is a writerly book, with a style and tone carefully attuned to letting a mystery tale unfold very differently in different lives over the course of a single weekend. It is complex and intimate in its descriptions, and shows wonderful cunning in hingeing the story on an ‘event’ that may or may not have happened. "Szabad", on the other hand, tells a monochromatic and brutal story that is not complex, is intimate only about the adolescent narrator, and is almost painfully journalistic.