Jane ’s Reviews > Walking Naked > Status Update

A satisfying conceit for a writer, and in my book I made use of it, equating the harsh red dust, the empty, stone sky, with the dead marriage. (Which is not to say, as Andrew does sometimes, that writers are liars. If we are compulsive rearrangers, obsessional shapers of patterns, it is only to make the truth clearer.)

I suppose I do complain sometimes. Who doesn't? We all know
(or believe secretly) that when we were children we were happy
and trusting and hopeful and good and that we would still be all
these pleasant things if sometime, somewhere, somehow, we had not been betrayed.

But she had never understood the difference between necessary acquaintances and friends. A mixture of shyness and honesty made casual contact an ordeal. An interested look from a stranger, a kindly smile, threw her into a turmoil. How much should she tell, reveal of herself? To hold back seemed mean-spirited. People were either friends of the bosom to be loved and trusted with secrets or they were nothing.