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The Dry Heart, by Natalia Ginzburg

'There are other things in life, I told myself, than making love or having children. There are a thousand things to do and one of them is writing a book on the origins of Christianity. My own life seemed to me meagre and limited, but it was too late to change it and at the back of all my thoughts now there was always the image of the revolver.'

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The Crane Wife, by CJ Hauser

'He said he couldn't ever promise to take care of me the way I took care of him. This was an observation he volunteered freely.

[...]

I tried to help Joey because I thought that without the distraction of all his miseries - which seemed to me so easily solvable - he would finally love me properly. He would take care of me that way I'd been taking care of him. I would fix and fix and fix until he was able to notice that I was standing there, hoping to be loved. But of course it doesn't work that way.

What is the wisdom here? That I was a shit nurse? That it is hard to heal someone who does not want to get well? That nursing is seldom repaid with love?

Or perhaps, more honestly: that you cannot actually ethically love someone you see as your patient.'

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Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux

'I discovered what people are capable of, in other words, anything: sublime or deadly desires, lack of dignity, attitudes and beliefs I had found absurd in others until I myself turned to them. Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.'

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Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux

'[...] although he spoke fairly good French, I could not express myself in his language. Later I realized that this situation spared me the illusion that we shared a perfect relationship, or even formed a whole. Because his French strayed slightly from standard use and because I occasionally had doubts about the meaning he gave to words, I was able to appreciate the approximate quality of our conversations. From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.'

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Stay True by Hua Hsu

'I felt a little bad excluding Ken from this world I was discovering [...] But I figured there was little I could do to truly shake his confidence. He saw people as innately good and open-minded. I saw a bad CD collection as evidence of moral weakness. This part of me never rubbed off on him.'

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2024

Reunion, by Fred Uhlman

Stay True, by Hua Hsu

Simple Passion, by Annie Ernaux

Green Dot, by Madeleine Gray

In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado

The Dry Heart, by Natalia Ginzburg

Wild Swans, by Jung Chang

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20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

‘The stars shone down on me inquisitively as if wed met before, and I knew we had. The damp night breeze was the same that had blown across my pillow as a child. started to worry. Those old things gained shape too easily, too quickly. I worried that this place would pull me back, that it would not let me go again. I worried that my will to survive might shrink and age here. I suddenly missed the cruel Beijing life. I missed my insecurity. I missed my unknown and dangerous future. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, I missed the sharp edges of my life.’

- Xiaolu Guo

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Lanny by Max Porter

‘I hold him and soothe him and he’s all warm bumps. Warm bump of an elbow, of a knee, hot little heels like pebbles warmed by their own internal sun.’ 

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The Rachel Incident

‘Some days later, James took three buses to Dingle, eight hours in total, and gatecrashed a festival that Dr Byrne was speaking at. It was a profoundly stupid thing to do. Dr Byrne ignored and dodged him at the festival, sent him a terse text message to meet him at the hotel, and then they argued all night. I don’t think James actually wanted Dr Byrne to leave his wife. He just felt like he deserved more respect, more time, a small pied-à-terre and a marabou dressing gown. He wanted the affair to be Frencher, if at all possible.’

- Caroline O’Donoghue (is a genius)

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Before by Ada Limón

[...] and I never knew survival was like that. If you live, you look back and beg for it again, the hazardous bliss before you know what you would miss.

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Love in the Time of Cholera

‘He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.’ 

-  Gabriel García Márquez

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

’On the night Sam went missing, it occurred to Sadie that not everything in life was as solid state as it appeared. A childish game might be deadly. A friend might disappear. And as much as a person might try to shield herself from it, the possibility for the other outcome ins always there. We are all living, at most, half of a life, she though. There was the life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made.

And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living. Sometimes, it felt as if you might be walking down Brattle Street, and without warning, you could slip into this other life, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole that led to Wonder-land. You would end up a different version of yourself, in some other town. But it wouldn't be strange like Wonderland, not at all. Because you would have expected all along that it could have turned out that way. You would feel relief, because you had always wondered what that other life would have looked like. And there you were.

But Sadie didn't say these things to Sam.’

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Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux

Monday 6

[...] Again he made that gesture of twisting my nose, as if I were a little girl, when I talked to him about the women he’s had in France. A confession? Or is he embarrassed that this is not the case? And what does it matter now anyway. 

Wednesday 2

Like other women, I will calmly do my errands, take an interest in the books and movies coming out, watch flowers break through the soil in January and February. Is this better than shopping for clothes, thinking about the caresses of the night before and dreaming of the ones to follow, waiting with your heart in your throat?... No, probably not. 

Friday 2

[...] At the Filonov exhibition, there is a recording in which he says, ‘When you’re having difficulty doing something, you have to keep going; it’s by discovering the solution that you really do something new.’

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Any Human Heart by William Boyd

‘The pleasures of my life here are simple - simple, inexpensive and democratic. A warm hill of Marmande tomatoes on a roadside vendor’s stall. A cold beer on a pavement table of the Cafe de France - Marie Therese inside making me a sandwich au camembert. Munching the knob off a fresh baguette as I wander back from Sainte-Sabine. The farinaceous smell of the white dust raised by a breeze from the doorway. A cuckoo sounding in the perfectly silent woods beyond the meadow. The huge grey, cerise, pink, orange and washed-out blue of a sunset seen from my rear terrace. The drilling of the cicadas at noon - the soft dialling-tone of the crickets as dusk slowly gathers. A good book, a hammock and a cold, beaded bottle of blanc sec. A rough red wine and steak frites. The cool, dark, shuttered silence of my bedroom - and, as I go to sleep, the prospect that all this will be available to me again, unchanged, tomorrow.’

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Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

‘“All right, Tess. You want it all? You don’t care about consequences? Then it is too late. I could tell you to leave him alone. That he’s complicated, not in a sexy way, but in a damaged way. I could tell you damage isn’t sexy, it’s scary. You’re still young enough to think every experience will improve you in some long-term way, but it isn’t true. How do you suppose damage gets passed on?’

--

‘I was completely turned on, switched on, not by my taste, but by Jake’s certainty. There were so few moments I had been certain in my life. I was constant revision, constant doubt.’

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2023

Getting Lost, by Annie Ernaux

The Rag and Bone Shop, by Veronica O’Keane

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

Really Good, Actually, by Monica Heisey

Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Husband, by Maud Ventura

High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

Stray, by Stephanie Danler

Strong Female Character, by Fern Brady

Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton

The Happy Couple, by Naoise Dolan

All the Beauty in the World, by Patrick Bringley

The Rachel Incident, by Caroline O’Donoghue

Yellowface, by Rebecca F. Kuang

The Years, by Annie Ernaux

Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan

Swimming in the Dark, by Tomasz Jędrowski

Lanny, by Max Porter

The Wager, by David Grann

Foster, by Claire Keegan

Avalon, by Nell Zink

Bellies, by Nicola Dinan

An Uneasy Inheritance, by Polly Toynbee

Conversations on Love, by Natasha Lunn

I’m a Fan, by Sheena Patel

The Girl with the Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier

Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann

The Stranger in the Woods, by Mike Finkel

Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, by Katherine Angel

Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata

Good Material, by Dolly Alderton

Prima Facie, by Susie Miller

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, by Xiaolu Guo

The Crane Wife, by CJ Hauser

Your Face Belongs to Us, by Kashmir Hill

The Promise, by Damon Galgut

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‘Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.’

(William James)