'‘Books talk among themselves’, Umberto Eco (1984: 61) once quipped convincingly. Readers overhear those conversations, I assert. Some books sing to you (as Francesca Rendle-Short, in her performative essay on memoir in Offshoot, says of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The Hate Race [232]). Offshoot crackles at me. Staying ululates.' (Introduction)