Linda Lancione

The Taste of Blood Linda Lancione

The Taste of Blood is a modern Cain-and-Abel tale that casts the speaker (sister) in conflict with her younger brother, and it leads readers through the bewilderment, outrage, and outright rage of a first child mourning the loss of her birthright-her parents' exclusive love-to an emotionally compromised son. In poems that forsake easy redemption for expression of stripped, painful truths, this collection takes us into territory few have the courage to explore: sibling rivalry so deep it feels apocryphal and universal, biblical, and pagan. It's a modern Cain-and-Abel tale that casts the speaker (sister) in conflict with her younger brother, and it leads readers through the bewilderment, outrage, and outright rage of a first child mourning the loss of her birthright-her parents' exclusive love-to an emotionally compromised son. What begins as childish resentment and jealousy deepens, along with the parents' deaths and the brother's descent into mental illness, into something more brooding and dark, in equal parts fear and primal, involuntary love. The writing is spare, crisp and utterly without sentiment and renders truths we sometimes flinch from in a book that is chilling, powerful, honest, and will not be easily forgotten. -Rebecca Foust, author of Paradise Drive, God Seed and All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song