It takes time to find your favourite Chinese food place, and the friends to attend it with. But once you've found it, nothing—not even a murder—can ever keep you away.

Language determines who we are, but we are never just one person. We are many identities, many of whom might hate each other. In that case, language is a tightrope between identities with nothing in common, or an identity long ago lost.

David Rakoff's Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish is a novel in verse, a device which—while it may seem benign—can be a crystalline lens for the dark and absurd.