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359. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Gail Honeyman

Genre:  Fiction

327 pages, published May 9, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Eleanor Oliphant is a woman who is hard to pin down. She is socially awkward and usually say exactly what she’s thinking.  Her life is planned around work with weekends reserved for frozen pizza, vodka, and phone calls with her imprisoned mum.  All of this changes when she meets Raymond, the IT guy from her office.  When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living.

Quotes 

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”

 

“in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder.”

 

“There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock. The threads tighten slightly from Monday to Friday.”

 

“Sometimes you simply needed someone kind to sit with you while you deal with things.”

 

“Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are.”

 

“A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who’s wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I think that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It’s not as though I’m expecting a reply. I’m fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.”

 

“I find lateness exceptionally rude; it’s so disrespectful, implying unambiguously that you consider yourself and your own time to be so much more valuable than the other person’s.”

 

“Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering?”

 

“She had tried to steer me towards vertiginous heels again – why are these people so incredibly keen on crippling their female customers? I began to wonder if cobblers and chiropractors had established some fiendish cartel.”

 

“Obscenity is the distinguishing hallmark of a sadly limited vocabulary.”

 

“No thank you,” I said. “I don’t want to accept a drink from you, because then I would be obliged to purchase one for you in return, and I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in spending two drinks’ worth of time with you.”

 

“These days, loneliness is the new cancer–-a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.”

 

“I wasn’t good at pretending, that was the thing. After what had happened in that burning house, given what went on there, I could see no point in being anything other than truthful with the world. I had, literally, nothing left to lose. But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I’d worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don’t find very funny, or do things they don’t particularly want to, with people whose company they don’t particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I’d fly solo. It was safer that way. Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.”

 

“There are scars on my heart, just as thick, as disfiguring as those on my face. I know they’re there. I hope some undamaged tissue remains, a patch through which love can come in and flow out.”

 

“I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.”

 

“I’m not sure I’d like to be burned. I think I might like to be fed to zoo animals. It would be both environmentally friendly and a lovely treat for the larger carnivores. Could you request that?” 

My Take

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine reminded me a lot of The Rosie Project.  Both books are about unconventional characters struggling to make sense of a world that was not made for them.  I enjoyed this book, especially the humorous and poignant insights of the title character.  It all expectedly wraps up neatly at the end, but it is an enjoyable time getting there.

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357. The Likeness

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

466 pages, published May 1, 2009

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

The Likeness is book two in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series.  It starts six months after the end of In the Woods (book one).  After the events that occurred in the previous book, Detective Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad with no plans to go back.  She is pulled back in when the victim in a grisly crime scene looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Cassie goes undercover must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more important, who she was.

Quotes 

“There’s a Spanish proverb,” he said, “that’s always fascinated me. “Take what you want and pay for it, says God.'” “I don’t believe in God,” Daniel said, “but that principle seems, to me, to have a divinity of its own; a kind of blazing purity. What could be simpler, or more crucial? You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and that you will have to pay it.”

 

“I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack.”

 

“Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.”

 

“Regardless of the advertising campaigns may tell us, we can’t have it all. Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it’s a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that’s worth it and a limb you can accept losing. To go consenting to the sacrifice.”

 

“Have you noticed how easily the very young die? They make the best martyrs for any cause, the best soldiers, the best suicides. It’s because they’re held here so lightly: they haven’t yet accumulated loves and responsibilities and commitments and all the things that tie us securely to this world. They can let go of it as easily and simply as lifting a finger. But as you get older, you begin to find things that are worth holding onto, forever.”

 

“Now that’s a concept that’s always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world – we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition.”

 

“But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons.”

 

“It took my breath away, that evening. If you’ve ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you’ve got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you’ve been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it.”

 

“It was-this always seems to shock people all over again- a happy childhood. For the first few months I spent a lot of time at the bottom of the garden, crying till I threw up and yelling rude words at the neighborhood kids who tried to make friends. But children are pragmatic, they come alive and kicking out of a whole lot worse than orphanhood, and I could only hold out so long against the fact that nothing would bring my parents back and against the thousand vivid things around me, Emma-next-door hanging over the wall and my new bike glinting red in the sunshine and the half-wild kittens in the garden shed, all fidgeting insistently while they waited for me to wake up again and come out to play. I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you’ve lost. ”

 

“The idea was flawed, of course,” he said irritably. “Innately and fatally flawed. It depended on two of the human race’s greatest myths: the possibility of permanence, and the simplicity of human nature. Both of which are all well and good in literature, but the purest fantasy outside the covers of a book. Our story should have stopped that night with the cold cocoa, the night we moved in: and they all lived happily ever after, the end. Inconveniently, however, real life demanded that we keep on living.”

 

“That kind of friendship doesn’t just materialize at the end of the rainbow one morning in a soft-focus Hollywood haze. For it to last this long, and at such close quarters, some serious work had gone into it. Ask any ice-skater or ballet dancer or show jumper, anyone who lives by beautiful moving things: nothing takes as much work as effortlessness.”

 

“Look at all the old wars, centuries ago: the king led his men into battle. Always. That was what the ruler was: both on a practical level and on a mystical one, he was the one who stepped forwards to lead his tribe, put his life at stake for them, become the sacrifice for their safety. If he had refused to do that most crucial thing at that most crucial moment, they would have ripped him apart- and rightly so: he would have shown himself to be an impostor, with no right to the throne. The king was the country; how could he possibly expect it go into battle without him? But now… Can you see any modern president or prime minister on the front line, leading his men into the war he’s started? And once that physical and mystical link is broken, once the ruler is no longer willing to be the sacrifice for his people, he becomes not a leader but a leech, forcing others to take his risks while he sits in safety and battens on their losses. War becomes a hideous abstraction, a game for bureaucrats to play on paper; soldiers and civilians become mere pawns, to be sacrificed by the thousand for reasons that have no roots in any reality. As soon as rulers mean nothing, war means nothing; human life means nothing. We’re ruled by venal little usurpers, all of us, and they make meaninglessness everywhere they go.” 

My Take

Having thoroughly enjoyed two previous Tana French books (The Witch Elm and In the Woods), I had high hopes for The Likeness.  It did not disappoint.  French is such a master storyteller and has such affection for her characters that it is impossible not to become completely absorbed in the story.  Some interesting twists, but this book is worth reading for the quality of the writing rather than the puzzle of its central mystery.

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356. Coffee with Jesus

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   David Wilkie

Genre:  Fiction, Graphic Novel, Theology

118 pages, published November 1, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The graphic novel Coffee with Jesus is taken from a daily online comic strip born out of artist David Wilkie’s frustration with the polarized political climate in America.  The strip is organized around six themes:  getting to know Jesus, spiritual disciplines, relationships, culture, church, and the challenges of life.

Quotes 

 

My Take

I was first made aware of Coffee with Jesus when my church used it for several weeks as a launch pad for sermons.  There is a lot of insight and relevant commentary in this short book told in a new and creative format.  Many of the strips really got me thinking.

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354. Lethal White

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

650 pages, published September 18, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Lethal White is J.K. Rowling’s fourth book featuring Private Investigator Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott.  It opens with Billy, a mentally troubled young man, telling Strike “I seen a kid killed…He strangled it, up by the horse.”  This statement sets Strike and Ellacot off on a hunt that turns into a murder investigation of a member of Parliament.

Quotes 

“Pretending you’re OK when you aren’t isn’t strength.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” Robin contradicted him. The champagne had fizzed on her tongue and seemed to give her courage even before it hit her brain. “Sometimes, acting as though you’re all right, makes you all right. Sometimes you’ve got to slap on a brave face and walk out into the world, and after a while it isn’t an act anymore, it’s who you are. If I’d waited to feel ready to leave my room after—you know,” she said, “I’d still be in there. I had to leave before I was ready.”

 

“I was in therapy for a bit. Now I do CBT exercises.” “Do you, though?” Strike asked mildly. “Because I bought vegetarian bacon a week ago, but it’s not making me any healthier, just sitting there in the fridge.”

 

“Life had taught him that a great and powerful love could be felt for the most apparently unworthy people, a circumstance that ought, after all, to give everybody consolation.”

 

“How often were you aware, while it happened, that you were living an hour that would change the course of your life forever?”

 

“Because men’s crimes are always ours in the final analysis, aren’t they, Mr. Strike? Ultimate responsibility always lies with the woman, who should have stopped it, who should have acted, who must have known. Your failings are really our failings, aren’t they? Because the proper role of the woman is carer, and there’s nothing lower in this whole world than a bad mother.”

 

“The feel of her was both new and familiar, as though he had held her a long time ago, as though he had missed it without knowing it for years.”

 

“As suddenly as they had reached for each other, they broke apart. Tears were rolling down Robin’s face. For one moment of madness, Strike yearned to say, “Come with me”, but there are words that can never be unsaid or forgotten, and those, he knew, were some of them.”

 

“I think marriage is nearly always an unfathomable entity, even to the people inside it. It took this… all of this mess… to make me realize I can’t go on. I don’t really know when I stopped loving him,”

 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve loved anyone, since, like you loved me.”

“No, I haven’t,” he said, “and thank fuck for that.” 

My Take

The reason to read Lethal White isn’t the mystery at its core, which is fine but a bit convoluted at times.  The reason to read it is the superb portrait painted by J.K. Rowling of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot, the two main, recurring characters in the Cormoran Strike series.  They are so richly drawn and so accessible that it makes reading the book worthwhile.

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349. An American Marriage

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Tayari Jones

Genre:  Fiction

308 pages, published February 6, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

African American newlyweds Celestial and Roy, an aspiring artist and a young executive, are living the American Dream in Atlanta when Roy is wrongly accused and convicted of rape.  How they navigate the ensuing years is the subject of this book.

Quotes 

“But home isn’t where you land; home is where you launch. You can’t pick your home any more than you can choose your family. In poker, you get five cards. Three of them you can swap out, but two are yours to keep: family and native land.”

 

“There should be a word for this, the way it feels to steal something that’s already yours.”

 

“A woman doesn’t always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Everyone of us has lain down for a reason that was not love.”

 

“There are too many loose ends in the world in need of knots.”     

 

“I’m alone in a way that’s more than the fact that I am the only living person within these walls. Up until now, I thought I knew what was and wasn’t possible. Maybe that’s what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It’s like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It’s the same thing, but it’s not the same at all. That’s the best way I can put it. I look in the mirror and I know it’s me, but I can’t quite recognize myself.”

 

“Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience.”

 

“I thought of Walter again. “Six or twelve,” he sometimes said when he was depressed, which wasn’t all the time but often enough that I recognized a blue mood when it was settling in. “That’s your fate as a black man. Carried by six or judged by twelve.”

 

“Much of life is timing and circumstance, I see that now.”

 

“I have always let you know how much I care, right? You never had to wonder. I’m not a man for words. Daddy showed me that you ‘do’ for a woman. Remember that time when you damn near had a nervous breakdown because it looked like the hickory-nut tree in the front yard was thinking about dying? Where I’m from, we don’t believe in spending money on pets, let alone trees. But I couldn’t bear to see you fret, so I hired a tree doctor. See, in my mind, that was a love letter.”

 

“Sometimes when you like where you end up, you don’t care how you got there.”

 

“You can never really unlove somebody. Maybe it changes shape, but it’s there.”

 

“Sometimes it’s exhausting for me to simply walk into the house. I try and calm myself, remember that I’ve lived alone before. Sleeping by myself didn’t kill me then and will not kill me now. But this what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn’t simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again.” 

My Take

Tayari Jones is a gifted writer and I appreciated the insight that she provided into the lives of people who are typically outside my social circles.  After reading An American Marriage, I felt that I had a better understanding of the African American communities and the issues that they have to contend with, especially African American men.  I was also impressed with the understanding Jones conveys of how a marriage works or doesn’t work.

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348. The Sentence is Death

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

384 pages, published June 4, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The Sentence is Death is the second in Anthony Horowitz’s bestselling series starring Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and himself.  “You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late . . . “

were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found in his house, bludgeoned to death a £3,000 bottle of wine.  Painted on the wall by the body were three digits.  Enter PI Hawthorne and Anthony Horowitz as they follow a series of bizarre leads to track down the killer.

Quotes 

“I’ve met police dogs with more intelligence than those two. You could tell them everything we’ve done, down to the last word, and they’d still end up running around in a circle, sniffing each other’s arses.” 

My Take

I had a hard time following all of the twists and turns of this mystery.  Part of the problem was that I listened to the audio version, so I couldn’t re-read key passages that contained important clues.  Not quite as good as Magpie Murders which is my favorite mystery of the last ten years, but still a good read.

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346. The King’s Curse

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Phillipa Gregory

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

592 pages, published August 14, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The King’s Curse is the final novel in the Cousins’ War series by renowned historical fiction author Phillipa Gregory.  It tells the fascinating story of the ups and downs of noble woman Margaret Pole, a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon and cousin of Elizabeth of York (the White Princess).  Margaret had a unique vantage point to witness the rise to power and eventual corruption of Henry VIII, one of history’s great monsters who was cursed to never produce a male heir.

Quotes 

“Thomas More once told me: lion or king, never show fear or you are a dead man.”

 

“A single man’s imperfect conscience can never be superior to centuries of tradition.”

 

“Life is a risk, who knows this better than me? Who knows more surely that babies die easily, that children fall ill from the least cause, that royal blood is fatally weak, that death walks behind my family like a faithful black hound?”

 

“But Elizabeth and I are accustomed to loss, we are Plantagenets—we dine on a diet of betrayal and heartbreak.”

 

“He was such a happy boy, and happiness is not memorable.” 

My Take

I’m a big fan of Philippa Gregory, the prolific writer of historical fiction in Britain.  Since starting my reading quest, I’ve read and enjoyed the following books by Gregory:  The Queen’s Fool, The Taming of the Queen, The Kingmaker’s Daughter, and The Last Tudor.  The King’s Curse did not disappoint.  Gregory makes you feel a part of history, delving into the lives, motivations, hopes and fears of historical figures that brings them and that part of history to life.  I have always had a particular interest in 14th and 15th Century British history and increased my understanding of the players and times of that era after reading The King’s Curse.

 

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344. Then She Was Gone

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Lisa Jewel

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller

359 pages, published April 17, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

Summary

Then She Was Gone tells the story of Laurel whose 15 year old daughter Ellie disappears.  Ten years later, Laurel is a divorced woman in her early 50’s who starts dating a charming stranger named Floyd whose 9 year old daughter Poppy is a precocious, pretty and reminiscent of Ellie.  Things then take a dark and unexpected turn.

Quotes 

“When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream.”

 

“I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing.”

 

“Did you know that the parts of the brain involved in decision-making aren’t fully developed until you’re twenty-five years old?”

 

“If she could rewind the timeline, untwist it and roll it back the other way like a ball of wool, she’d see the knots in the yarn, the warning signs. Looking at it backward it was obvious all along.”

 

“If she could rewind the timeline, untwist it and roll it back the other way like a ball of wool, she’d see the knots in the yarn, the warning signs. Looking at it backward it was obvious all along.”

 

“That was how she’d once viewed her perfect life: as a series of bad smells and unfulfilled duties, petty worries and late bills.”

 

“People try and make out there’s a greater purpose, a secret meaning, that it all means something. And it doesn’t.”

 

“She’d never worked out how he’d done it, how he’d found that healthy pink part of himself among the wreckage of everything else. But she didn’t blame him. Not in the least. She wished she could do the same; she wished she could pack a couple of large suitcases and say good-bye to herself, wish herself a good life, thank herself for all the memories, look fondly upon herself for just one long, lingering moment and then shut the door quietly, chin up, morning sun playing hopefully on the crown of her head, a bright new future awaiting her. She would do it in a flash. She really would.” 

My Take

Then She Was Gone was a quick, captivating read.  Author Lisa Jewell does a particularly good job with the main character Laurel and her struggles to keep living after her 15 year old daughter disappears.  There are also several twists that kept me turning the pages of this book.

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343. In the Woods

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Tana French

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller

464 pages, published May 27, 2008

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In the Woods opens with the disappearance of Peter and Jamie, two twelve year old children, from the woods nearby their small town of Knocknaree in Ireland where they often played with their best friend Adam.  Adam is discovered the next day in the same woods with his tennis shoes soaked in blood and no memory of what happened.  Fast forward 20 years later and Adam (who now goes by Rob) is a police detective in a nearby town.  When another 12 year old is found murdered near in the same woods where Peter and Jamie disappeared, Adam and his partner/best friend Cassie are assigned to the case.  The investigation stirs up lots of old memories for Adam and his life begins to unravel.

Quotes 

“I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn’t find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.”

 

“I am not good at noticing when I’m happy, except in retrospect.”

 

“The girls I dream of are the gentle ones, wistful by high windows or singing sweet old songs at a piano, long hair drifting, tender as apple blossom. But a girl who goes into battle beside you and keeps your back is a different thing, a thing to make you shiver. Think of the first time you slept with someone, or the first time you fell in love: that blinding explosion that left you cracking to the fingertips with electricity, initiated and transformed. I tell you that was nothing, nothing at all, beside the power of putting your lives, simply and daily, into each other’s hands.”

 

“Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.”

 

“Human beings, as I know better than most, can get used to anything. Over time, even the unthinkable gradually wears a little niche for itself in your mind and becomes just something that happened.”

 

“She informed me, matter-of-factly, that she was old enough to know the difference between intriguing and fucked up. “You should go for younger women,” she advised me. “They can’t always tell.”

 

“We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches.”

 

“If she had hurt me, I could have forgiven her without even having to think about it; but I couldn’t forgive her for being hurt.”

 

“People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it’s all backwards. It’s not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.” 

My Take

After reading and loving The Witch Elm earlier this year, I definitely wanted to read more by the incredibly talented Tana French.  In the Woods is the first of her six book Dublin Murder Squad series and did not disappoint.  French compensates for a slowly building (at times meandering) plot, by creating detailed and nuanced characters in a richly drawn atmosphere.  This is a mystery and you want to know what happened, but you are also happy to spend time in the compelling world created by French.  I look forward to reading more from this impressive writer.

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342. In a Dark, Dark Wood

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    Ruth Ware

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

308 pages, published April 19, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Nora, the protagonist In a Dark, Dark Wood, hasn’t seen her former best friend Clare for ten years since they left University.  When she receives an invitation to Clare’s Hen Party (British for Bachelorette Party) set in a remote part of the English countryside, Nora equivocates but ultimately decides to attend, a decision she will come to deeply regret.

Quotes 

“Clare watched them from the far sofa, and I found myself watching her, remembering how she loved to observe, how she used to throw a remark out, like a pebble into a pond, and then back quietly away to watch the ripples as people scrapped it out. It was not an endearing habit, but it was one I could not condemn. I understood it too well. I, too, am happier watching than being watched.”

 

“People don’t change,” Nina said bitterly. “They just get more punctilious about hiding their true selves.”

 

“I always thought that being self-sufficient was a strength, but now I realize it’s a kind of weakness, too.”

 

“there’s one thing I dislike more than being hurt, it’s being seen to be hurt.”

 

“There are days when I don’t hear a single human voice, apart from the radio, and you know what? I quite like that.”

 

“There was something strangely naked about it, like we were on a stage set, playing our parts to an audience of eyes out there in the wood.”

 

“You’d think people would be wary of spilling to a writer. You’d think they’d know that we’re essentially birds of carrion, picking over the corpses of dead affairs and forgotten arguments to recycle them in our work—zombie reincarnations of their former selves, stitched into a macabre new patchwork of our own devising.”

 

“There’s a kind of focusing effect that happens when you’re very ill. I saw it with my granddad, when he was slipping away. You stop caring about the big stuff. Your world shrinks down to very small concerns: the way your dressing gown cord presses uncomfortably against your ribs, the pain in your spine, the feel of a hand in yours. It’s that narrowing that enables you to cope, I suppose. The wider world stops mattering. And as you grow more and more ill, your world shrinks further, until the only thing that matters is just to keep on breathing.” 

My Take

In a Dark, Dark Wood is a serviceable thriller with a few twists and turns to keep things interesting.  I’ve read better of this genre, but still enjoyed my time with this book.

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