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This is turning out a bad day, a day when Alison feels submerged by the house, the family, instead of riding high, in her element, in control.

"I can never quite believe they've all grown up and... no, not gone of course, not gone at all, just moved away a bit. Far as I'm concerned, they're all still here, like a lot of dear little ghosts."

Such a wonderful base for them this was— a real old-fashioned family. The sight of them all trooping off to school, I can see them now. And I'd count them back in, later, and there'd be a proper tea waiting for them, and everyone had their special place at the table. I'm sure Gina's told you lots. It's the first ten years that count, isn't it? Ten, fifteen. That's what sets anyone up for life, isn't it?

But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.

This continues to a dreamy story. When you see a dream, every extraordinary thing seems so normal, yet you feel uneasy about all that after you woke up.

This book is like a déjà-vue for The Unconsoled. It’s as if Ishiguro has these ideas for a book but after finishing it, he hadn’t have enough expression of his ideas, so he continues in the next book.

I was recently listening to a podcast about Ishiguro’s works and someone described the Unconsoled as a dream where you are late for an exam and you enter the room without knowing the subject and you are naked. I am more and more convinced how infused Ishiguro’s works are, especially sequential ones, and I can say the exact same thing about this one.

Unreliable, so unreliable…

I am halfway through this book, trying to remember the similarities between this and the Unconsoled. Ishiguro has a way of merging his novels, and the most characteristic for those two that comes to mind is “delusional importance of characters”.

She had turned on me then because I had helped her, and because she had told me the truth out loud. It’s not a good idea to let people show you too much, or tell you too much, or they'll hate you for it.

We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come... But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me; but I won't rest till you are with me... I never will!

I wish I were out of doors - I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free... and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I'm sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills...

Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but, as my own being - so, don't talk of our separation again - it is impracticable; and …

It would degrade me to marry Heathliff, now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…

Sybill regarded her unconscious like she regarded her reproductive system, as a messy, murky darkness full of unexplained fluids and longings which she preferred not to know too much about.

Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.

Except for eyeball, this description is so me))))

“I do not have a pleasing appearance. My nose is big and was broken when I fell off the hen-house roof. One eyeball skitters up to the top, and my hair is wild and will not stay tamped down.”

Funny, witty and quite entertaining!

"Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books"

It was a tall, thin, old house, comfortably untidy, worn to fit the shape of the family.

Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.

She sees herself as a tiny skirted figure like the silhouette on a ladies' room door, skimming the curve of the earth as it sails through space.

In her new life, she will rent a room somewhere. Or she will live in Mrs. Minton's house, or find herself an apartment with a swimming pool Cheryl can visit. She will teach English to Ben's refu-gees, or Spanish to Cheryl's classmates. Or she might try something new that she hasn't even imagined yet. There is no limit to the possibilities.

Would they remember their childhoods fondly, or were they storing up grudges against her? She had tried her best to be a good mother-which to her meant a predictable mother. She had promised herself that her children would never have to worry what sort of mood she was in; they would never peek into her bedroom in the morning to see how their day was going to go.

Some of her friends were uncomfortable with death and pretended it hadn't happened, which filled her with a perverse desire to mention Derek's name at every opportunity…

Some were oversolicitous, telephoning too often and treating her like an invalid who needed dutiful tending. But she knew it was important to maintain her social connec-tions. Or so she had been told.

When she was a child she used to imagine that her mother might painlessly die somehow and her father would marry a lovely, serene woman who would sit at Willa's bedside when she had a bad dream and lay a cool palm on her forehead. Willa had pictured this woman in layers of flowing white chiffon, for some reason. Her name would be something like Clara, or Claire. Something calm.

"Reverend Sands came to call at the house and asked if I would reconsider. Not reconsider my disbelief, he said, but reconsider my resignation. He said, Many of your fellow members probably don't believe, either, but at least in church you put yourself in position for belief. Otherwise you reduce the possibility'"

"You know what's the saddest thing about kids whose mothers are mean to them? It's that even so, their mothers are the ones they hold their arms out to afterward for comfort. Isn't that pathetic?"

Did all these kids come from perfectly happy families? Weren't any of them hiding something that was going on at home? They didn't seem to be. They didn't seem to have a thing on their minds but lunch and friends and lipstick.

When she grew up she was going to marry a man who came from a big, close, jolly family. He would get along with all of them—he'd be the same kind of man her father was, friendly and easygoing—and all of them would love Willa and treat her like one of their own.
She would have either six children or eight children, half of them girls and half boys, and they would grow up playing with their multitude of cousins.