GREAT SECRET Whenever I’m learning something difficult, I keep expectations low, and aspirations high.

I'm good with machines. I know where to scratch, pet, and tickle them.

Like his admirer Samuel Beckett, Johnson locates his voices among conditions of such deprivation that even the most miserable memories are gilded by comparison: this paradox fuels equal parts of comedy and pathos. Never sentimental, at once corrosive and elegiac, House Mother Normal is a remarkable achievement.

Spaying is a compromise in terms of reverence for life, but perhaps a necessary one in a society which kills millions of dogs and cats a year in animal shelters.