Status Updates From The Summer Book

"Midges – not to be confused with mosquitoes – dance in vertical clouds and always in tempo. Millions and billions of microscopic midges rise and fall in perfect precision, singing stridently."

"The house was crouched like a long, squat animal, and the black swallows circled above it with piercing shrieks, like knives in the air."

"Write: I hate field mice. No. Write: I hate field mice, but I don’t like it when they die. They make tunnels in the ground, and then they eat up Papa’s bulbs. And they teach their children to make tunnels and eat bulbs. And at night they all sleep with their arms around each other. They don’t know they’re unfortunate creatures. Is that a good word?”

"“Stop talking in symbols, it’s old-fashioned. I talk about taking root and right away you’re into grandchildren. Why do you use so many euphemisms and metaphors? Are you afraid?”

"Papa did nothing but work at his desk. One evening, Sophia wrote a letter and stuck it under the door. It said, 'I hate you. With warm personal wishes, Sophia.' All the words were correctly spelled."

"“Crooks are famous for eating crayfish,”

"“I’m not going to pray to Him again,” said Sophia. 'He knows, anyway,” said Grandmother, who was lying on her back in the bow. The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you’ve made an effort on your own.'"

"Spring rewarded Papa’s labours with great gentleness."

"New roots were seeking a foothold all over the island, and every stem and stalk was infused with life."

"Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he’s been through; it is a sheath of memories and security."

"'Solitude,' Grandmother said. 'Yes, indeed. That is a luxury.'"

"Dreams burn a lot of petrol."

"She saw the bulldozer outlined against the water in all of its shapeless bulk. It had pushed its way down to the meadow by the beach and had then slid sideways into a hollow and kicked up a lot of sand. The grassy bank had given way, softly and treacherously, quite inexplicably, and the forest-eating monster lay there in silence at an unnatural angle, a picture of thwarted force."

"Severed roots stuck up everywhere. In places they formed a thin lacework filled with tiny clumps of earth that trembled on invisible wires as they dried in the sun. It was an altered landscape – breathless, like the silence after an explosion or a scream – and Sophia studied everything as she walked on down the new road, which seemed much longer than the old. The woods were silent."

"It was bordered on both sides by a sprawling chaos, as if huge hands had pressed back the forest, bent it and folded it like some soft grass that would never rise up again."

"Moppy turned wild and rarely came into the house. He was the same colour as the island – a light yellowish grey with striped shadings like granite, or like sunlight on a sand bottom."

"The cat’s whole being radiated calm superiority."

"Sophia wanted only to hear about Venice, andespecially about the dark canals that smelled of must and rot and that each year pulled the city farther down into the mud, down into a soft black slime where golden dinner plates lay buried. There is something very elegant about throwing the plates out the window after dinner, and about living in a house that is slowly sinking to its doom.:

"It’s a funny thing about bogs. You can fill them with rocks and sand and old logs and make a little fenced-in yard on top with a woodpile and a chopping block – but bogs go right on behaving like bogs. Early in the spring they breathe ice and make their own mist, in remembrance of the time when they had black water and their own sedge blossoming untouched."

"The ground was shiny with brown needles, except where the spruces had decided to crawl instead of stand, their greenery luxuriating in a kind of frenzy, damp and glossy as if in a jungle."

"Below the veranda, the vegetation in the morning shade was like a rainforest of lush, evil leaves."