Kevin Maness’s Reviews > The Days of Abandonment > Status Update

“I had an excessive reaction that pierced the surface of things.”

“The whole future—I thought—will be that way, life lives together with the damp odor of the land of the dead, attention with inattention, passionate leaps of the heart along with abrupt losses of meaning. But it won’t be worse than the past.”

"I wanted the flat certainty of normal days, even though I knew all too well that a frenetic movement upward endured in my body, a darting, as if I had seen an ugly poisonous insect at the bottom of a hole and every part of me were still retreating, my arms and hands waving, feet kicking. I have to relearn—I said to myself—the tranquil pace of those who believe they know where they’re going and why."

"...I’m losing myself and if I don’t catch hold what will happen to the children?"

"No, I thought, squeezing the rag and struggling to get up: starting at a certain point, the future is only a need to live in the past. To immediately redo the grammatical tenses."

This was supposed to be for the RBC book group, but it got abandoned. Now I'm curious.