things have gotten worse since we last talked

Much like social media in 2020, the way people represent themselves online is not always how they may be face to face and intentions are easily hidden behind carefully curated tweets or seemingly innocuous posts with a veiled agenda. I was struck by an urge to re-read immediately after putting it down because it is one of those rare stories where every line, and every word, carries weight. As skilled as Larocca is at subtlety, and conveying his characters feelings and intentions without necessarily stating them explicitly, he proves to be equally adept at making the reader uncomfortable, and the books ending is equal parts memorable, upsetting and horrifyingly surreal.īy the books close, answers are not forthcoming beyond those that we were given right from page one. Things escalate fairly rapidly once Agnes feels more comfortable with Zoe, and things build to a horrifying crescendo, replete with some pretty gnarly and unpleasant body horror. Zoe, on the other hand, remains something of an enigma, even as the story progresses and while we learn a lot about Agnes, her upbringing and her life in general throughout the book, most of what we learn about Zoe is inferred and not explicit, knowing what we do by her actions and by reading between the lines, and not what she tells Agnes.

Agnes seems almost desperate to share private details about her life, freely telling very personal stories with very little encouragement. Since I’ve been back at work, I’ve been feeling great.It is an understated and low-key start, but the brilliance of this novella is how insidiously the stakes build and the escalation slowly creeps up on you. When since introduces a state in the past that is still continuing in the present, we use a present perfect form of the verb after since and a present perfect form of the verb in the main clause: It’s been years since … is more common in American English than It’s years since …. It’s been years since I’ve ridden a bike.

We can use the past simple, present perfect or past perfect after since with the expression it + be + time + since: They haven’t received any junk mail since they’ve moved house. They haven’t received any junk mail since they moved house. When since introduces an action or event at a point of time in the past, we can use the past simple or present perfect after since and the present perfect in the main clause :

Things have gotten worse since we last talked