Madelyne’s Reviews > A Novel Bookstore > Status Update

"We want splendid books, books that immerse us in the splendor of reality and keep us there; books that prove to us that love is at work in the world next to evil, right up against it, at times indistinctly, and that it always will be, just the way that suffering will always ravage hearts. We want good novels."

Chapter 36, but especially pages 278-280... WOW!

(cont.) "It's a question you have to ask yourself. Listen carefully: it is a way to learn to live. There are grown-ups who will say no, that literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature informs, instructs, It prepares you for life."

"Novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched. There are books where, as you read, you wonder: What would I have done? ...(cont.)"

He showed them discreetly to a little corner in the bookstore that was still valid: two shelves where, at his own risk, he had brought together the best of his selection: he called it the "honey shelf." Bliss guaranteed, provided they were trusting enough to buy any book on that shelf.

Nothing else mattered but that desire. Anne-Marie parked her car wherever she could--anywhere at all, off to the side, on the shoulder, beneath a tree, at the edge of a cornfield. She'd made it a habit. The moment she switched off the engine, all she had to do was jot down the words, words that I ask for nothing more."

"She had discovered this through experience: the moment she climbed in behind the wheel, provided she was alone, and did not have any children to pick up at the other end of the ride, she broke off with life, with its obligations, its ties. Ideas came to her. She had an urgent desire to write."