Luke’s Reviews > Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family > Status Update

"Her face had the same wide-eyed expression that children put on when someone reading a fairy tale to them is tactless enough to insert some general remarks on morals and duty—a mixture of embarrassment and impatience, piety and boredom."

(Yes, I switched to the library copy, but there's only so many times one is able to face with equanimity one's copy splitting in half during the course of reading.)

Copy's falling apart as I read it, but that's what you get with a borderline mass market paperback that came out three years before the author passed.

Now who could've seen this coming (even checking out the local library edition in addition to my home copy for some good ol' translation hedonism).