Tag: august

Mrs. Dalloway

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Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1925.

I felt like I shouldn’t have had this book on my list at all. Nancy Pearl bearly makes reference to it in More Book Lust and it certainly isn’t one of her recommendations. In fact, she only mentions it in reference to another book. After spending several hours mucking through Woolf’s prose I feel I should go back to my Lust list and weed out the “unintentional” recommendations and put them on an “If You Really Care” list.

I didn’t care for Mrs. Dalloway (character OR book). In a nutshell the plot is one day in the life of a middle-aged Londoner as she goes about planning for a party. Nothing more than that. The style of writing is tedious as it is a stream of every character’s inner monologue and one must be careful of character switches for not everything is from the rambling point of view of Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway. The chronology of the story is also a maze of creativity as it bounces back and forth in time. A Wednesday in June post World War I is present day, here and now so to speak.
One detail of Mrs. Dalloway that I found myself fixated on is Mrs. Dalloway’s relationship with a man named Peter. As she goes through her day she thinks about him with regularity. He is the man Dalloway could have married but didn’t. I found myself wondering if she had regrets. Through all the ramblings it was hard to say with certainty she did.

Book trivia: Mrs. Dalloway is the product of two short stories melded together.

Author Fact: Virginia Woolf suffered from depression and at the age of 58 committed suicide by drowning.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Voice” (p 230). Pearl is actually recommending Our Kind by Kate Walbert. In Our Kind a book club is reading Mrs. Dalloway.

Dive From Clausen’s Pier

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Packer, Ann. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier. New York: Random House, 2002.

I have to start off by saying this seems to be the month for reading about selfish women. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier is about Carrie Bell, a young woman who doesn’t really give a lot of thought to other people’s feelings. After her fiance is paralyzed from a diving accident (hence the title of the book) Carrie must decide if she can spend the rest of her life with a quadriplegic she doesn’t really love anymore. After the decision has been made the rest of the book is more of the same, Carrie steamrolling over people’s emotions while she forges ahead in search of what makes her happy. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier is extremely well written. Character development is flawless. Carrie is supposed to make you angry. Her family and friends are appropriately hurt and slow to forgive. You may not agree with the character (I certainly didn’t when it came to her second big decision), but you will agree with the pages on which she comes to life.

Personal aside: Probably the person I connected with the best is Paul Frasier, better known as Kilroy. There was something magical and intriguing about his character. For days after finishing Dive From Clausen’s Pier I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Best lines: “How could you become anything without having wanted to be that thing first?” (p 227), and “Lane and I were like lines that intersected and then split apart again, without a pattern but with a kind of purpose” (p 281). I have a friendship like that. We can go for months without speaking, living those parallel lives, until one day our paths cross and it’s like we never were apart.

Author Fact: This is Packer’s first novel.

Book Trivia: The Dive From Clausen’s Pier was made into a Lifetime Original movie.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “First Book” (p 89) because indeed, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier is Ann Packer’s first novel. Also, in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ready, Set, Liftoff: Books to Ignite Discussion” (p 192). I would also agree with this selection because it’s the ultimate topic for discussion: what would YOU do?

Lord of the Flies

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Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Perigee Books, 1954.

What high school English lit teacher hasn’t put Lord of the Flies on his or her syllabi? What student hasn’t read at least one excerpt from this book? I shudder to think classrooms have moved to the movie version, but if that means Golding’s story lives on, so be it.

This could be called the most chilling sociological experiment of all times (besides Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game.) What happens when you take the most prim and organized society (proper English boys from a prep school), hand it the suggestion of chaos and violence (they are escaping a nuclear war), then leave it to its own devices without guidance (a deserted island without adults)? All normalcy goes out the window when the boys try to build their own hierarchical, structured society. In a Darwinian approach some boys, the strongest & smartest, rise to the top while weaker boys become scapegoats and victims of paranoia. In the beginning the group is held together by necessity. They recognize the need for fairness and organization, especially if they want to be rescued. But all that vanishes when the younger boys become increasingly convinced there is a monster on the island. No amount of rationalizing can calm them. Fear and violence escalates until there is no turning back. All calm is lost to tragedy.

Probably the most frustrating part about the book was something very deliberate on Golding’s part. When the boys are finally rescued the Naval officer is embarrassed by the children, especially Ralph’s emotional breakdown when remembering how it all fell apart. You want the officer, the adult, to be more understanding, to take the boys more seriously.

Book Trivia: Lord of the Flies influenced musicians like U2 and Iron Maiden and sparked television parodies but a full length movie has yet to be made.

Author Fact: Golding won a Nobel Prize for literature.

Favorite line: “The group of boys looked at the conch with affectionate respect” (p 128).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads: Decade by Decade (1950s),” (p 177).

While I Was Gone

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Miller, Sue. While I Was Gone.

My mother borrowed this book from a house she manages. For that reason I needed to finish it before leaving the island. Piece of cake. I was able to read this, start to finish, in two days. Mostly because I found myself thinking about it long after I had put it down.

While the plot was amazing Jo Becker wasn’t a likable character for me. Which is probably what Sue Miller wanted from me. I found her to be deceitful, conniving, and more than a little self centered and selfish. Jo is a woman of lies; an easy liar. So much so that her everyday relationships are tinged with half truths and falsehoods. Even her daughters recognize her deceit and are sensitive to her phoniness. When an old roommate from Jo’s past resurfaces more lies are uncovered.
But it’s not her falsity that hangs like sour fruit. It’s her selfishness that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. She misinterprets the intentions of the old roommate and begins to fantasize about an affair with him. When she thinks about how easy it would be to commit adultery she barely gives thought to whether or not her husband has ever thought about straying. When a terrible secret stands between Jo and having the affair she expects her husband to support her and not be upset by the turn of events.
The best part of While I was Gone was the character development of Jo’s husband. Watching Daniel struggle with jealousy and anger was like a metamorphosis. He emerges a different man.
This book made me question secrets. Which is worse? A half truth or a half lie?

Best line: “With the closing of the door I felt released from the awareness of his sorrow that had held me in his orbit” (p 8).

Author fact: Sue Miller has connections to Western Massachusetts.

Book Trivia: While I Was Gone was made into a 2004 movie starring Kirstie Alley.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Wayward Wives” (p 232).

Daughter of Fortune

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Allende, Isabel. Daughter of Fortune. New York: Perennial, 2000.

This took me three days to read thanks to a five hour car ride, an hour boat ride and an evening by the sea. Read the day before, the day of, and the day after Isabel Allende’s birthday.

Daughter of Fortune is the didactic tale of what happens when you become so obsessed with a thought, a feeling that you carry the obsession long after you remember why or what it was all about. This is the complicated saga of Eliza Sommers, raised as an orphan by a Victorian brother and sister – strict and unfeeling Jeremy and his spinster sister Rose. Secrets abound in Daughter of Fortune. When Eliza falls in love with delivery boy Joaquin Andieta her whole life changes. An obsession to be his “slave” claims her and compels her to follow him from Valparasio, Chile to California during the gold rush of 1849.

Best lines to remember: “Many years later, standing before a human head preserved in a jar of gin, Eliza would remember the first meeting with Joaquin Andieta and again experience the same unbearable anguish” (p 80). This line, if you remember it 150 pages later, gives away the entire story. Another line to remember, “The girl felt that she was opening like a carnivorous flower, emitting demonic perfumes to attract her man like a Venus’s-flytrap, crushing him, swallowing him, digesting him, and finally spitting out the splinters of his bones” (p 94) and one more, “‘I told you before that a fixation of the heart is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations but love is the worst'” (p 129). Wise words from the Machi.

Best word in the book: epizootic.

Author Fact: According to Allende’s website she has received 12 honorary doctorates. I enjoyed poking around the family photos the most.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 600s (food)” (p 73).


A Separate Peace

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Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1959.

I freaking love this book! I have always compared Gene’s preparatory boarding school to the one I attended when I was of the same age. It wasn’t just that both schools are New England based and have similar landscapes. Knowles describes the culture of a private school set in the middle of a northeastern community really, really well.  The imposing brick and ivy buildings. The sprawling athletic fields. The massive trees that line the campus, the air of academia…I could go on.

I first read this book when I was 14. Fresh meat in a Freshman English class. We read A Separate Peace as an introduction to literature. Funny how it’s the only book I remember in detail from the course. It’s the only book I don’t mind rereading on a regular basis. Mr. Hill guided us through what we were supposed to get out of it. I know because all the important parts are underlined. Four years later and Mr. Hill was still having his students read the same book. I know because my sister used my copy (why buy a new one?) and had highlighted the all same sections. I’ve never forgotten those sections, especially the words, “I jounced the limb.” I. Jounced. The. Limb. To this day it is the most profound confession of wrongdoing I have ever read. Nothing else compares.

Okay. So. To review the book- A Separate Peace is about a friendship between two opposites. Gene is smart, Phineas is athletic. Gene is sensitive, Phineas is carefree. Gene is reserved and cautious, Phineas is bold and daring. The one thing they have in common is being roommates at Devon, a prep school for boys. Throughout the entire story Gene is constantly in a mental tug-of-war with his feelings towards Finny. He is resentful of the way everything comes so easily to his athletic roommate (like when Phineas broke a long standing swimming record without even trying). It’s as if Gene has to forcefully remind himself everyday they are best of friends. He tags along, a willing participant in Finny’s daily adventures but he has to convince himself he is having fun. When Finny starts a secret society where members must jump from a tree into a river on school property Gene goes along with that as well, hating each and every jump. But, when Phineas falls out of the tree, missing the river completely things get complicated. Did Gene make his best friend and roommate fall? The psychological struggle of doubt that ensues is the central theme of the entire story.

Favorite lines (bear with me for there are a few), “Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even death by violence” (p 6), “Everyone has a moment in history which belongs to him” (p 32) and ” ‘the only real swimming is in the ocean’ ” (p 37).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Boys Coming of Age” (p 45).

Undaunted Courage

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Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

This is not your ordinary retelling of the Lewis and Clark expedition. This is not the regular, run of the mill, same old story. Undaunted Courage is a different perspective of the story often told in the history books. While elements of the expedition are rehashed like interactions with the Native Americans, obstacles relating to weather, terrain and health, and supply management (how could they not?) Ambrose focuses mostly on the collaboration between Commander in Chief Jefferson and Captain Lewis. He tries to get inside the head of Meriwether Lewis to portray thoughts and feelings beyond what was written in the surviving journals and notes, thus making the text more conversational in tone. Because President Jefferson considered the expedition to be Lewis’s gig Clark is mentioned where necessary and never becomes a focal point of the story. To make sure the reader is completely aware this is a Lewis story Ambrose continues it beyond the famous expedition and details Lewis’s devastating suicide.

Favorite lines, “Lewis took his advice and became a great hiker, with feet as tough ass his butt” (p 30), “It was always cold, often brutally cold, sometimes so cold a man’s penis would freeze if he wasn’t quick about it” (p 191), and a startling observation about Lewis, “My guess is that he was manic-depressive” (p 312).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 137).

Meaning of Everything

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Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything: the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

I suppose since Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything serves as a follow-up to The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary I should link to the review of The Professor…here.

I hate to admit this, but I didn’t care for The Meaning of Everything. Okay, while I’m being honest I’ll go for broke – I didn’t get beyond page 19. There. I said it. I was bored. As a person deeply connected to reading you would think I would be intimate with words, especially the origin of words. I mean, words form sentences and sentences form paragraphs and paragraphs form pages and pages fill books, right? And books are what it’s all about, right? No. I guess the bottom line is I don’t care about where the word came from. The word, when it stands alone, is boring. How sad is that? I need words strung together into sentences. Those sentences need to be woven together to ultimately make a story interesting. This, however, was not.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 400s” (p 68).

Zarafa

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Allin, Michael. Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris. New York: Walker and Company, 1998.

I read this in honor of Napoleon being born in the month of August and even though Zarafa wasn’t exactly about Napoleon I was delighted by the tidbits of information that involved him: did you know the camel Napoleon rode while in Cairo was stuffed and put on display in a museum? (p 27) and Napoleon was such a big fan of books that he arranged for every guest at a banquet to receive translated copies of the Koran and Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (p 31)? Interesting. But probably the best story was about Napoleon’s reading habits while on the march. He would tear out the pages of a book, one by one, after he had read them – tossing them back to the soldiers behind him. The soldiers in turn would read the torn-out pages and the pass them back until the entire company had read the same book (p 32).

Zarafa is the story of a giraffe’s remarkable journey from Egypt to Paris. Charles X of France was presented with a young female giraffe as a gift (and political strategy) from the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali. I can only imagine what the people of 1845 France thought of this unusual gift. Michael Allin not only sets out to describe this giraffe’s amazing two and a half year journey but provide the political, economic and historical backdrop for the trip. What makes Allin’s account so enjoyable is his ability to make the supporting subject matter interesting. He gives Zarafa a personality, allowing for the humanization of her traits with such descriptors as “aloof dignity” and “orphaned.” This humanizing made it difficult to read the details of how Zarafa’s mother was murdered and how her pelt, teeth, tail, meat, etc became commodities.

Favorite lines, “Under Muhammad Ali, Egypt went from the Stone Age to the Enlightenment in a single personality” (p 37), “the traveler from the south is reluctant to proceed, homesick for immortal things” (p 86).

BookLust Twist: In both Book Lust and More Book Lust. From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Wild Life” (p 245). From More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Complex Napoleon” (p 53).

Zel

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Napoli, Donna Jo. Zel. New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 1996.

Zel is the very creative retelling of the fairy tale classic, ‘Rapunzel.” In Napoli’s version Zel and her mother live in isolation in the Swiss countryside, far away from human contact. Mother does her very best to give Zel everything she needs in the hopes of binding Zel to her forever. As her daughter reaches maturity mother realizes Zel will have an important decision to make, marry and raise a traditional family, or follow in her mother’s footsteps and sell her soul to become a witch. Afraid Zel will make the “wrong” decision Zel’s mother locks Zel in the tower everyone knows from the traditional story. Napoli does a clever job at including small details from the original story including the obsession with lamb’s lettuce.
The very first thing I noticed about this book was its voice structure. Zel is told from the point of view of three different characters: Zel (in third person present), Konrad (in third person present), and Zel’s mother (oddly enough, in first person present). In the beginning I wanted to complain about it, but by the end of the third chapter I found it ingenious. Through Zel’s mother’s thoughts you get the incredibly twisted psychology of love and obsession. The story wouldn’t have been as dark and dangerous if all voices were the same. We needed to see mother’s reasoning for locking Zel away in the tower. This psychological insight allowed us see the story from a different angle and not lean on the original story of Rapunzel.

Favorite lines (all from ‘Mother’), “Such crass people, whose warmth can be bought with a coin” (p 16), “Panic teases my skin” (p 59), and “I live the life I would have have lived if I never had Zel in the first place. Only it is far worse – for I know what I have lost” (p 142).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Fractured Fairy Tales” (p 94).

All-Girl Football Team

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Nordan, Lewis. The All-Girl Football Team. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1989.

At first I didn’t know what to make of the collection of short stories within The All-Girl Football Team. Most of the stories take place in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and Sugar Mecklin is almost always the central character. Sugar is a typical young boy looking for ways to grow up fast in a stranger than strange household. Mama is obsessed with drama and tinged with mental illness and Daddy is an alcoholic with a thing for rock ‘n roll. All of the stories are laced with an off-kilter humor that alternately made me want to laugh and cry. The very first short story called, “Sugar Among the Chickens” tells the tale of eleven year old Sugar literally fishing (with a pole, hook and all) for the chickens in the front yard. Since his parents won’t let him go to the local watering hole chickens are his substitute for fish and fresh kernels of corn serve as bait…However, the third story, “Sugar, the Eunuchs and Big G.B” wasn’t nearly as funny as it was dark. In it Sugar tries to shoot his father. You’ll begin to notice Nordan has a things for guns, especially loaded ones. Probably the hardest story to read was “Wild Dog.” If you have a thing for animals read it with one eye shut tight.

Favorite section, “I threw a cat into the chicken yard…The rooster killed the cat, but it didn’t take a hook. Too bad about the cat. You’re not going to catch a rooster without making a sacrifice or two” (p 9).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, ” Lewis Nordan: Too Good To Miss” (p 173). Here is what I find interesting. “Off-kilter humor that alternately made me want to laugh and cry” was how I described Nordan’s autobiography, Boy With a Loaded Gun. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Wind Sand & Stars

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Saint-Exupery, Antoine de. Wind, Sand and Stars. New york: Time Reading Program, 1939.

It wasn’t a stretch for me to read this in honor of National Aviation Month. This book is all about war-time flying, but it also is shrouded in mystery. Five years after writing Wind, Sand and Stars (originally published in French as Terre de Hommes) Saint-Exupery went missing after a mission over southern France. He was never heard from again. Where did he go? Another tantilizing mystery is whether Wind, Sand and Stars is fiction or nonfiction. Part philosophy, part action adventure, all in the first person it is impossible to tell. Could it be semi-biographical in the sense that some of the events are real but names and places have been changed to protect the innocent? I wasn’t able to extract fact from fiction.
Another interesting fact about Wind, Sand and Stars was the fact that once the book was published in France in 1939 Saint-Exupery rushed off to the United States to write two extra chapters. It was if he could never be satisfied with the finished product and wanted to keep writing and writing.

Nevertheless, Wind, Sand and Stars was incredibly enjoyable. I could have quoted nearly the entire book, but here are a few favorite lines: “We waited to hear the rest, but no word sounded. And as the seconds fell it became more and more evident that “no” would be followed by no further word, was eternal and without appeal, that Lecrivain not only had not landed at Casablanca but would never again land anywhere” (p 9), and “Fate has pronounced a decision from which there is no appeal” (p 23).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Flying Above the Clouds” (p 89).

Those Tremendous Mountains

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Hawke, David Freeman. Those Tremendous Mountains: the Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1980.

Confession time: I thought I would be bored to hell and back by this book. History was never my strong point, even if I was supposed to relate to it. Ancestry or not, I couldn’t relate to anything historical. Those Tremendous Mountains was a different story. I was really amazed by how much I enjoyed it. To say that I loved every page wouldn’t be far off the mark. Hawke blends the diaries, notes and sketches of Captains Meriweather Lewis and William Clark with his own narrative to create a lively and creative account of the famous duo’s expedition. It is not a dry retelling of the trials and tribulations of traversing  daunting mountain ranges. It is a portrait of desire, courage, friendship and loyalty. Thanks to a very specific and detailed charge by Thomas Jefferson to count every tree, flower, river, animal, and weather condition along the journey and both Lewis and Clark’s insatiable desire and curiosity to discover the world around them they documented thousands of species never seen before, making their expedition that much more famous than those gone who had before them. Their curiosity for every new plant and animal they encountered gave them a wealth of information to send back to the President. Hawke also carefully portrays Lewis and Clark as humanitarians with a keen sense of diplomacy when dealing with the Native American tribes they encountered. Knowing they would need help crossing the Rockies Lewis and Clark made sure to have plenty of gifts for the natives. Bartering for the things they needed came easier with a show a respect rather than force. 

Probably my favorite parts in the book were the displays of friendship between Lewis and Clark. While President Jefferson continuously called it Lewis’ expedition, Lewis insisted Clark was his equal and it was their expedition. Even after Jefferson downgraded Clark’s rank from captain to second lieutenant Lewis the men on the expedition “never learned of his true rank and always called him Captain” (p 51). Probably my favorite lines comes at the end: “By then the trust  between them was complete and remained so to the end” (p 248). 

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust n the chapter called ” Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 136).

Turbulent Souls

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Dubner, Stephen J. Turbulent Souls: a Catholic Son’s Return to His Jewish Family. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1998.

In the beginning, Turbulent Souls started out slow for me. I’m not exactly sure why. I think, true to form, the background of any story is the least exciting. It’s the opening act, the warming up so to speak. This setting of the stage is vital to the story, though. Dubner needed to explain his Jewish parents conversion to Catholicism in order for the rest of his story to make sense.

Stephen Dubner was born into a large, upstate New York, Catholic family. Only, Stephen never really felt at home with his parents’ view on religion. Something just didn’t seem comfortable to him. As a young man in his 20’s he meets a Jewish actress who guides him to discover his family’s orginal faith. The more he learns of Jewish customs the easier it is for him to shed everything he memorized about Catholic customs. The more he practices Jewish customs the more it feels like a rediscovery, a return to a religion he left behind before birth. As a journalist Dubner begins to see his family has a story, an amazing one. He cannot ignore the fact that both his parents converted right around the time Jews were being murdered by the Nazis. He discovers Ethel Rosenberg was his mother’s first cousin. As he uncovers the secrets of his family he finds himself.

There were many, many great lines in this book. Here are a couple describing Dubner’s religious childhood: “The aberrant memory is of my father loading us all into the pink-and-gray Rambler for Sunday Mass…my father slamming his pinkie in the back door and yelling, “Shit!” I knew the word; I just didn’t know that my father did” (p 108). “The fires of Hell kept me from letting Dale Schaeffer cheat off my math test even though he offered me first a dollar and then a skull-bashing” (p 114).
Here’s one from Dubner’s college years that I particularly liked (reminded me of my house): “…but even the three of us were no match for the memories of the house. They overpowered us, sent us to bed early, made our supper conversation timid” (p 151).
And one from adulthood: “When I was an alter boy I would get nervous being alone with Father DiPace. He represented God; I represented human shortcoming” (p 201). There are many more fantastic lines, but I’ll stop there.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Me, Me, Me: Autobiographies and Memoirs” (p 162).

Mutual Friend

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Busch, Frederick. The Mutual Friend: a Novel. Boston: David R. Godine, 1983.

While this book received rave reviews from publications like The New York Times and The Village Voice I didn’t enjoy it. Maybe it was the raw violence. Or the disturbing sex scenes. I’m not sure. I found it troublesome. Probably the best part was the mastery of voice. For the most part, the entire story is told from the point of view of George Dolby, Charles Dickens’ right hand man. There is a chapter told by a maid and another by his wife…But, let me back up.

The Mutual Friend is the story of Charles Dickens at the height of his fame and the end of his life. While on his book tour Dolby is his tour manager, friend, guardian and sounding board. It’s Dolby who mostly reveals the drama in Dickens’ life. The health-draining stress of the tour, his practically nonexistent marriage, troubling health issues, oppressive poverty, and faltering ego. But, not all of The Mutual Friend is told from Dolby’s point of view. Probably the most disturbing chapter is that of Barbara, the maid. She starts out as a prostitute who prefers women. When Dickens looks for a Jewish maid, Barbara works her way into his household and seduces his son. Another chapter is told from the viewpoint of Dickens’s wife. The demise of their marriage is sad and poignant.

From Kate’s chapter: “He approached me, then, and his scented breath, the cologne he wore, the smell of the lavender sachet with which his clothing was fragrant, all came down to me as a rush of memory floods upon the heartsick widow who opens and closes her solitary cupboard to remind herself that once she was someone’s wife” (p 84).
Another disturbing line: “…and I looked at the dazzle on the surface of the river and saw what lay beneath – the bones of dogs, the limbs of babies, the sewage of civilization” (p 161).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Frederick Busch: Too Good To Miss” (p 48).