“Sth, I know that woman,” the novel begins. “She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an 18-year-old girl with one of those deep-down, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church.”
