This dialogue creates a literary uncanny valley. We realize that the Eva we loved (or feared) in 1973 never existed. She was always a performance. The Second Entry is therefore not a sequel, but an autopsy of a ghost. Why "Entry" and not "Chapter" or "Book"? Because V. Ness (if it is indeed the same author) is playing with the idea of archival intrusion. The manuscript includes footnotes written in three different shades of ink, some dated years apart. There are pages where the text has been scratched out with a razor blade, leaving only a single word legible: "Witness."
One particularly haunting passage in the Second Entry describes Eva sitting in a library, reading the first In Blume as if it were a stranger’s novel. She annotates the margins with corrections. "I didn't cry here," she writes. "I laughed." Later, the "Echo" column responds: "You lied then. You lie now. You are a liar in bloom." in blume second entry eva blume
Whether In Blume: Second Entry – Eva Blume is a lost masterpiece, a forgery, or the actual diary of a woman who outlived her own sanity, it forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: we are all the unreliable narrators of our own lives. The only difference between Eva Blume and us is that she has the courage to write it down twice. This dialogue creates a literary uncanny valley
By J. H. Morrison, Contributing Editor
The page is blank after that.