Rob Baker > Recent Status Updates

"Outside, the warm wind would shoulder the shutters, making them creak, and the raindrops would chase each other down the window-pane like transparent tadpoles" (96).

"Mother spent a lot of her spare time choosing places to be buried in, but they were generally situated in the most remote areas, and one had visions of the funeral cortège dropping exhausted by the wayside long before it had reached the grave" (99).

"Gradually the magic of the island setteld over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquiility, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful like a child's transfer and with the same tinge of unreality" (46).

I have a library copy that is about 4" x 6" with a built-in cloth bookmark...and 372 pages instead of 273...

"...all of us were standing there, like a storage room full of puppets..." (295).

"She gave me a look of approval. That was the way women operated in my community: if you wanted to be a wealthy Christian woman and maintain good standing, you needed to publicly disavow your luxuries in order to maintain possession of them" (80).

"'What a tool cynicism is to the corrupt, claiming the whole of the creation is broken and fraudulent, and thus we are all excused to indulge in whatever sins we wish--for what's a little more unfairness, in this unfair world?'" (286).

Not much of a fantasy reader (besides the uber texts of LOTR and Narnia), so time to mix one in. It's also a mystery, so I think that's what really drew me....