The power of a curse

My father was mercurial, difficult to please and often critical of his children: but he would have killed anyone who laid a hand on us. And so, knowing I was upset, he showed me what to do.
‘Lick your thumb,’ he said, ‘and place it on the review…’
An effective curse, he went on to explain, should be proportionate. So, for instance, declaring to the author of that book review I hope you die would be ineffective – all it would do was prove that I did not have the power of life and death. ‘Think about it for a bit if you have to.’
I licked my thumb and placed it on the review. I closed my eyes and thought of the journalist who wrote it, and I said to myself, may you never publish a first novel as successful as Crazy Paving.