Yellow Birds

La pluie nous a débués et lavés,
Et le soleil desséchés et noircis.
Pies, corbeaux nous ont les yeux cavés

---Villon.

There is something terribly morbid running throughout this book, the chance happenings, turnings, that lead to the horror, the way in which things might not have ended up as they did, the way in which low-level failing lives might have not spiraled downwards, out of control, intercepting the trajectory of other people's ordinary lives, bringing them within the orbit of that dark story. At first, since you'd only seen the film version-the latest one, not the old one-you thought that this would be about a single theme: the lack of hatred for the killers...

You start the day knowing it's rained the night before..can sense it like an animal: the stillness of the early hours, a hint of the smell of fresh earth, the delicate sound of leaves. 5.30, for an hour, you read, when you should be preparing for the 8 o'clock class. Scoff down a croissant, buttery and not crumbly at all. 

The coincidences...you'd read a review of Yellow Birds by J.B. and thought to yourself, yes, perhaps reportage is the thing, stay clear of all the bullshit fiction, the elaborate conceits, the constructions around reality; hadn't Dyer said as much? You haven't got the stomach for Johnson's Tree/Smoke. And then, some way into the book, out of the blue, as if it's staring you in the face, as if when you can't remember if you'd dreamed something or actually experienced it, there's the dream of the yellow bird...