Olive rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe in God. That’s all rubbish,” she said firmly.“Okay, but think of this, Olive. If God is love, then that man was touched by God.”Olive rolled her eyes again.“And maybe you don’t believe in God – which is fine, I don’t care – but you have been loved. And […]

Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea’s was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to ‘find their feet’ among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after […]

“There’s one question I want to ask you”, he began.She looked up.“Just one?”“If the phone rang in your garage on Long Island one morning, or one day, and it was me and I was in New York, or was even closer, and I had come to see you, what would you do?” Eilis appeared puzzled, […]

Hildur käynnisti auton ja laittoi lämmityksen täysille. Vasta sen jälkeen hän kiinnitti surffilaudan autonsa katolle, repi jääkylmin sormin neopreenipuvun yltään ja vaihtoi ylleen takapenkillä odottaneet kuivat vaatteet. Autin sivupeilistä hän näki veriset kasvonsa. Näky ei hätkähdyttänyt, sillä hän oli melko varma, että haava oli pieni. Pään alueen haavoista vain valui paljon verta. Hildur sylkäisi musta […]

She’d thought, I’ll do this first and think about it afterward. Now afterward had come and she had no idea what to think. I am baptized, I am married, I am Lila Dahl, and Lila Ames. I don’t know what else I should want. Except for the shame to be gone, and it ain’t. I’m […]

There’s a shimmer on a child’s hair, in the sunlight. There are rainbow colors in it, tiny, soft beams of just the same colors you can see in the dew sometimes. They’re in the petals of flowers, and they’re on a child’s skin. Your hair is straight and dark, and your skin is very fair. […]

We were very upset, all the same, for reasons too numerous to mention. Clearly our aunt was not a stable person. At the time we did not put this thought into words. It existed between us as a sort of undifferentiated attentiveness to all the details of her appearance and behaviour. At first this took […]