Alex Reeve > Quotes

“My body was an error, as if I'd received the wrong parcel in the post. I had hidden my form, faked its sex, lowered my voice and starved my hips, and in all that time I never considered that it might betray me at the first opportunity, and assert beyond doubt it was female. I never imagined there might be one rule that did apply to me.”
― Alex Reeve, The House on Half Moon Street

“I disliked looking in mirrors, but I wanted to check I had everything right, so I went into Alfie's room and stood in front of his with my eyes shut. I counted down from ten, and when I got to three, I opened them.
There was Lottie in the flesh, with her long chin and awkward stance, and her fidgeting fingers that never knew what to do with themselves. I almost felt sorry for her. She put her hands on her hips, accentuating her waistline. I glared at her, and she glared straight back.”
― Alex Reeve, The House on Half Moon Street

“It amazed me. Maria had been brought up in this place, and yet she had shone like a kingfisher flickering across the water. Perhaps that was why. Perhaps she looked at these streets and decided she was not part of them, and they were not part of her. She became what she chose to be, over and over again, every day. Something I could understand.”
― Alex Reeve, The House on Half Moon Street

“Most of the time, Jacob ignored what I was under these clothes, treating me as a young man in need of his guidance and wisdom. Whenever reminded, he shrugged and offered nothing. I think he imagined my previous life was a part I'd once performed in a play, or a character I'd made up, which wasn't all that far from the truth. I had been constructed from little more than petticoats and bonnets, and hadn't been sure there was anyone real inside.”
― Alex Reeve, The Anarchists' Club

“Between the meagre curtains I could see people sleeping, eight or ten to a room, huddled close together like baby mice. The alleyways were murky, but there was movement in the shadows. I passed an old woman all in black, dipping and slipping like a wounded crow, carrying a sack on her back that probably contained everything she owned. A little girl ran away from me, hurtling through the doorway of a tenement on bare feet, a cadaver of a place with dark, impenetrable windows like eye sockets long since excavated.”
― Alex Reeve, The House on Half Moon Street