To say I love Susan Sontag’s writing means I must come to terms with the fact that much of her fiction just isn’t that good.

Persistent images of isolation can be used to weaken female power by giving the impression that there are no tried-and-tested models of intellectual collaboration between women.

Writers wrestle in their stories with the myth of Greekness, working out an answer on the queer bodies of characters who identify as Greek differently from how they are supposed to.

I take it upon myself to pluck used books off a stranger’s stoop or from a trash can lid. This is how they sneak into my life, crawling with traces of the people who held them in the past, who touched them, who were touched by them. Strangers, like germs, cling to the pages of the books I steal for myself.

These three books give us flesh and blood, beating hearts you’ll still be able to hear long after the books are closed. I can’t say it will be easy reading, but I can promise it will be worthwhile.

The sorns are slender and humanoid and are the scientists and thinkers; the hrossa resemble overstretched otters; they are poets and musicians; and the pfifltriggi are the builders, looking like insectile frogs.