Ian McEwan - The Cement Garden

I have mentioned before that I'm a huge McEwan fan. At the start of this year I had three of his novels left to read, of which The Cement Garden was one. It's a funny thing, reading through a favourite author's entire works. On the one hand, the goal is obviously to finish - to read them all. On the other hand, there is a reluctance to finish because then there will be no more of something one loves. Luckily, McEwan has a new book out later this year, so reading one of his earlier novels and ticking it off my TBR (to be read) list seemed appropriate.

The Cement Garden was McEwan's first novel. The publication of this and his second novel, The Comfort of Strangers, caused him to be nicknamed 'Ian Macabre', and rightly so. Like many of his works, this is a seriously disturbing book. It is narrated by Jack, one of four children whose parents both die early in the novel. Various critics have suggested there is a strong Oedipal subtext running through the story, which is referenced in the first line ("I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way") and realised in the final scene, which I will not describe for fear of revealing spoilers. It is indeed plausible that McEwan drew on Freud to create the dark undercurrent that runs throughout, because the book is deeply unsettling in a way that is difficult to precisely define.

Jack is the second eldest of four siblings who decide after their mother has died that they don't want to publicise what has happened and risk being put in care, which would almost certainly result in their separation from one another. The pact they make to ensure things stay as they are, and the way this pact is physically manifested, haunts the rest of the book and taints it with a clammy sense of unease.

McEwan is at his best here; no word is out of place. His writing is visceral, nuanced, the heat of the summer palpable, the sloth of the children in their humid, festering surrounds somehow gripping.

As a mother, I found many of the passages worrying. Is this how all children feel or are these very unusual children? Tom, the youngest of the four, reacts to his mother's death with obvious grief, but this is soon overwhelmed by his concerns about being bullied at school. He goes through a phase of wanting to be a girl, and another of wanting to be a baby, which Julie, the eldest child, gladly entertains. The other children do not appear to react to the death of their parents with any grief or sorrow - instead, for example, Jack describes feelings of elation and hysterical joy at his newfound freedom. But we glimpse through Jack's narrative lense various activities that might hint at deeper feelings underneath: Sue, the younger girl, keeps a diary in which she records imaginary conversations with her mum. Julie occasionally lets Tom into their dead mother's room, which she has preserved behind a locked door, where he lies in her bed and tries on her clothes.

Jack himself allows his personal hygiene to fall entirely by the wayside, and we are treated to lengthy passages about his multiplying spots, sweaty clothes, dirty bedlinen and his greasy hair. This is in direct contrast to his sister Julie, whose beauty grows throughout the book, alongside Jack's illicit but pronounced attraction to her. From early on the children are shown playing 'doctor', a game which as adults we tend to regard as learning stripped of sexuality. McEwan, of course, does not let us off so easily. Sexuality is rife in the childhood he describes, and this too is discomfiting.

Although this is not a scary book, I found it difficult to read after lights out. McEwan's genius lies in unnerving us at some profound, subconsious level so that we are left on edge without quite knowing why: there are no monsters here. Instead it is the monsters within all of us that he depicts so well. His use of language is perfection, the characters vibrantly alive and the plot winds inexorably towards the inevitable finale.

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5. I know I should probably give it 5, as this really is McEwan at the top of his game. But I find it difficult to award 5 stars to a book that leaves me feeling so disturbed, and where I find the characters so nasty. I also tend to prefer the work McEwan does when he is exploring philosophical questions of art versus science, belief versus rationality (see Saturday, Amsterdam, Enduring Love). But if you are looking for a short read that will have you biting your nails and squirming in your seat, there's no doubt this is it.

Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - Shortlist

Earlier this month the shortlist for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction was announced. A. M. Homes was the winner of this prize in 2013. As you will know if you've been reading the blog for a while, she was one of my favourite discoveries last year. In fact she is attending the Sydney Writers' Festival next month and I am gutted I won't be there to see her. But I digress.

The point is, if A. M. Homes was awarded the Baileys Women's Prize for May We Be Forgiven, it makes me curious about the books that have been nominated this year - maybe among them lies another gem (or two)?

With no further ado, the nominees are:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Americanah

Hannah Kent – Burial Rites

Jhumpa Lahiri – The Lowland

Audrey Magee – The Undertaking

Eimear McBride – A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch

Such a great line-up. And I'm also impressed with the choice of judges this year, especially the fact that Caitlin Moran is among them (I love her!). When I read this quote, from Denise Mina, it made me think I would like to sit down and have a drink with these women:

“This list of six shortlisted books is a source of such pride to us judges, you might think we had done something more noble that just curling up, reading and loving them. This shortlist seemed to make itself known because we chose those books that we really, really loved. Not the ones we admired technically, or the cleverest ones, but those books that made us yelp with joy or sob on planes, the ones we’ve bought for friends and couldn’t wait to tell people about.

“WE CHOSE BOOKS THAT WE REALLY, REALLY LOVED”

I think I can speak for all of the judges when I say that we’re so proud of the shortlist of six books, we’ve begun to talk as if we had some hand in producing them. That’s wrong. We didn’t. We feel that sense of ownership because great books are beguiling and make readers feel proprietorial. It’s not just that the books are individually fantastic, but the span of the shortlist, in subject matter, style and tone, is so textured and the standard so high, choosing just one as the winner will be like choosing between your children. If you decide to do the Full Marathon and read all six before we announce the winner on the 4th June, I’ll bet you feel the way we do. If you don’t have time for six, and pick three for the Half Marathon, let us know how you get on, keep us updated and tell us who you think should win, if you can!”

- Denise Mina, WriterBaileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014 Judge 

Isn't that brilliant? "We chose books that we really, really loved" - shouldn't that be exactly how book prizes are judged?

So the winner is to be announced on the 4th of June. Given that The Goldfinch alone is 771 pages of book (I just went and checked in the lovely hardcover I was given for Christmas), it will certainly be a challenge to read all of these books by that date. But Burial Rites, The Lowland and The Goldfinch were already on my list for 2014. I'm going to add the rest and try to read all of the shortlisted nominees this year, if not by June 4. 

Who will join me for this delightful challenge? Who's in?

Jess Walter - Beautiful Ruins

This is the first book I 'read' on Audible. It had been sitting on my bedside table in hard copy for an awfully long time, unread. In fact, worse than that, it traveled with me from Australia, throughout Malaysia and Europe, to arrive with us in Toronto, without me having read more than the first chapter. What a waste! It is truly such a fun book I'm surprised I didn't get into it during our travels. I think the reason I didn't, though, is that it's one of those books in which the narrator changes from chapter to chapter. As a result, the story jumps around considerably. In this case the shifting nature of the narration works, but initially I resisted it. I like settling into a story. If the narrator, the setting, and the time period change too frequently, the flow of reading is seriously interrupted. Each chapter is like starting again.

When I downloaded Audible, this was my first purchase. And it was a perfect book to listen to. The narrative flow didn't matter as much out loud - it became more like a movie. Interestingly, we are accustomed to switching quickly between disjointed scenes in performative art forms. It doesn't feel as uncomfortable as it sometimes does on the page.

As I mentioned in my previous post on audio books, listening to a book rather than reading it adds a new dimension. The interpretation of the book by the person who records it is vital to one's enjoyment as a 'reader'. In this case, the narration was done by Eduardo Ballerini, who was unknown to me. He had a serious challenge on his hands. The story of Beautiful Ruins moves fluidly across continents and time periods. The many nationalities and corollary accents include Italian, American, Irish, English, and Russian. And Ballerini handled all of this very well. So well, in fact, that I giggled to myself frequently while listening - the narrative often succeeded in absorbing me to the extent that I forgot I was in public.

In spite of the rather garish looking cover, Beautiful Ruins is not a chick lit offering. It is a sweeping tale, covering a period from the 1960s until present-day, in places as diverse as Hollywood and remote coastal Italy, and featuring a wide range of protagonists including the charismatic Richard Burton.

The story starts in 1962, when beautiful American movie starlet Dee Moray arrives by boat in the remote (and fictional) coastal village of Porto Vergogna. Local hotelier Pasquale watches as the glamorous blonde steps onto shore. Nothing so exciting has ever happened before in his life.

Many years later, a now elderly Pasquale arrives at a studio in Los Angeles, looking for the woman he fell in love with so many years before. He encounters a man he has met before, the gruff movie producer Michael Deane, who Walter paints as a deliberate caricature of Hollywood absurdity. His face has had so much cosmetic work done he looks "like a 9-year-old Filipino girl". This kind of descriptive vigour is one of the strengths of the book - it's funny. Like really funny, laugh out-loud funny. Funnier than you think it will be, and at the most unexpected times - although it's difficult for me to say whether I would have found it quite so entertaining had I not had the benefit of Ballerini's take on Walter's script. And I use the word 'script' deliberately - in some ways, this does read like a script. I can see this as a movie and I guess I'm not alone, because I believe it has already been made into one, to be released later in 2014. 

So much happens in this book that it is quite impossible to compress into a succint review. Walter takes us through the travails of filming the epic Cleopatra in Rome, to the tempestuous relationship between Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, to a washed-up former drug addict's attempts to reinvigorate his music career through comedy at the Edinburgh Festival. We meet a writer pitching his script, an assistant producer on the day she might quit her dream job, a novelist whose single story idea takes him back again and again to the last days of 'his' World War II. At its heart, yes, this is a love story. But it is so much more than that. 

Walter is a good enough writer to pull all of this off with aplomb. It is not high literature, as such, but each character is skilfully portrayed and the many threads of the story are tied together in a satisfying finale. Beautiful Ruins left me thinking I would eagerly read whatever Walter wrote next. Having said that, I am not so keen that I will run out to find his previous five novels and devour them.

Overall assessment: A great read, well written, imaginative. 4 out of 5. 

Notes on reading with Audible: As I said above, this book was really funny. Unfortunately, because I listened to it in audio form, I don't have highlighted passages to take me back through this dense novel and pick out favourite (or problematic) bits. Sometimes days would go by where I couldn't find time to listen to my book, and I would read something else instead. Sometimes I would pick up the hard copy version of this novel in order to re-read a passage, or to remind myself of something that happened. It was an unusual reading experience for me, and it took me much longer to get through this book than had I just persisted with the paper version. Having said that, I'm glad I listened to it - the voices will stay with me, and I do believe that Ballerini's performance added something to my enjoyment of the book. But having the hard copy handy as a companion to the audio book was key.

Vale Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel García Márquez in Mexico City on March 29, 2004. © The Richard Avedon Foundation. From The New Yorker.

How sad I was to learn this week that Gabriel Garcia Marquez had died. He was truly one of my favourite writers. I started reading his work in high school, when our curriculum included the book of stories, Leaf Storm. I loved it so much I graduated to One Hundred Years of Solitude and then Love in the Time of Cholera, which remains one of my favourite books of all time. Since then I have tried to read as much of his work as possible. Most recently (several years ago) I read his novella, Memories of My Melancholy Whores. 

I loved Marquez's writing, but he also introduced me more generally to the world of Latin American fiction, and to magic realism. Marquez was my jumping off point into Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Laura Esquival, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda. And my mother, a great reader and a great influence on me, also loved Marquez. It was her copy of  One Hundred Years of Solitude that I read, complete with her pencilled-in, ease-of-reference family tree covering the title pages of the book. That book contains one of the great opening lines in all of literature: 

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

It's right up there with the opening lines of Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany and Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Perfection. 

Hearing of Marquez's death was a shock, for some reason, even though he was 87 years old. In honour of his writing and his life, I am going to turn back to his work in the next few months. I would love to re-read Love in the Time of Cholera, but I would also like to read some of his work I never got around to - like The Autumn of the Patriarch. 

Who is with me? Let's have a Marquez love-fest. I will post details when I have decided which book of his to read first.

Christina Baker Kline - Orphan Train



Between 1853 and 1929, 250,000 orphaned, abandoned or homeless children were transported on trains from urban centres in the U.S. to foster homes in rural areas of the midwest as part of a questionable welfare initiative. The founders of the orphan train program aimed to eradicate the existing system of institutional care which they believed stunted, rather than supported, children, and instead place them with families. It was what led to today's system of organised foster care. Unfortunately, the orphan train movement was insufficiently regulated and deeply flawed, and the families who sought to adopt children from the trains were often seeking free child labour, or worse, rather than a child to love and call their own.

This is the extraordinary history Christina Baker Kline draws on for her novel. Sadly it is a mediocre book, one that might have been better suited for a young adult audience, and Baker Kline fails to depict the fascinating phenomenon of the trains in sufficient depth to educate or enlighten a reader.

This was the first book chosen for the 2014 reading year of my Canadian bookclub. We sat down over dinner one night in February and mapped out our books for the year, a feat involving creative organisation, entertaining debate and numerous voting rounds. Most of the women enjoyed the novel well enough, and I admit that I was its harshest critic.  But my pet reading peeve is poor writing, and Baker Kline's writing is weak. By 'poor' or 'weak' writing I mean that the obvious is frequently stated, metaphors are drawn that don't really work, and events that should rightfully be shown are told, even glossed over.

Orphan Train tells the story of Molly, a 17 year old foster-child in modern-day Maine, who is sentenced to community service for stealing a library book, and Vivian, the woman to whose service Molly commits. It soon turns out that Molly and Vivian have much in common, Vivian having been orphaned at a young age. Vivian, of course, was one of the children shipped away from New York on an orphan train, and her tale of being tossed from foster home to foster home in rural Minnesota is appropriately bleak. The narration moves from Vivian's story to Molly's and back again, gradually revealing the secrets of Vivian's past as Molly's future becomes clear. Unfortunately Molly's story is less nuanced and far less interesting than Vivian's and it is hard to know why Baker Kline felt the need to tell the more interesting story of Vivian's life through this contemporary lense. Again, it feels as though she is using Molly to appeal to a younger generation of readers. If the book had been marketed as YA, I might have approached it differently, but for an adult novel it comes across as sappy and sentimental and a little condesending.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I read this and I'm glad to have learnt a little about the orphan trains, even if most of what I actually learnt came in researching around the novel rather than from the novel itself. For those of you looking for a light diversion, this may well be it - it has the feel of chick lit at times, especially in the latter half of Vivian's story, which is happier than her orphan train beginnings, and Baker Kline does succeed in getting her readers to keep turning the pages. All of the women in my book club were agreed that the novel became rather addictive in the second half, in the same way that a romance does when one is wondering who the heroine will end up marrying.

Overall assessment: 2.5 out of 5.

The Gift of Rare Books

I started writing this post months ago. It pertains to something that happened on my birthday, back in November 2013. So, you know, take that into account. I decided to publish this rather than scrap it because what I am really saying is this: I have become the kind of book-loving nerd who attends antiquarian book fairs and collects signed first editions. There is a passage in The Storied Life of A. J. Ficry where A.J. says that in the end, acquisitions don't matter - even the first edition E. A. Poe manuscript he treasured didn't matter. Only the people you love matter. And I really do agree with this. But I also believe that there is some joy to be derived, during life, from collecting things that give you pleasure.

So, for my birthday, months ago now, Bibliohubby went to significant trouble to track down bookstores in Toronto that carry rare books. He did the initial research without telling me, and then stumbled across an event that was happening on my birthday weekend, which he knew I would enjoy. And so it was that the four of us set out one Saturday in November to attend the Toronto International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Bibliohubby took Iggy downstairs to the learning centre whilst Lulu and I browsed (with Lulu on my chest in the Babybjorn, that most wonderful of inventions, leaving my hands free).

I have never before been to such an event but after this experience, I know I will be going again. Bookstores from all over the world were represented by small stalls, in which the rarest of books were displayed. Books from Hemingway's private library, inscribed to other writers. Original illustrations by E. H. Shepard from Winnie-the-Pooh books. First editions of classic novels. All manner of precious manuscripts. Textual history writ large. Amongst the stalls I honed in on two in particular, which held books by some of my favourite writers. That day we purchased a signed first edition of Alice Munro's Still Life and another signed first edition by Paul Auster - Yippee! I went home and placed the books carefully upon my new bookshelves.

A few weeks later, Bibliohubby arranged another surprise, taking me to one of the bookshops I had been introduced to at the fair. When we walked through the door, this is what we saw hung upon the wall in the vestibule:

 

"To care about words, to have a stake in what's written, to believe in the power of books, this overwhelms the rest and beside it, one's life becomes very small."

- Paul Auster

 

Those of you who know me well will know that Auster is my favourite writer. One of the quality assessment tests I give to new bookstores is whether they stock Auster's books and, if so, how many. To walk into this particular shop and find his words on the wall made it clear immediately that it was a place I would love.

Contact Editions is one of those bookstores you might want to live in. It is cosy and eclectic, hung with literary posters and prints and decorated with all manner of interesting bits and bobs, with a Chesterfield to sit and read in, green banker's lamps and, of course, walls lined with books. It is run by the most delightful couple, with the poetic names of Wesley and Lucia. I feel like a cat should live in the store too, a fat orange cat curled up on the sofa, with a bushy tail that slowly wags its disapproval when the door is left open to drafts.

Again we walked out with books, a signed Salman Rushdie, another signed Auster and Wesley threw in an additional first edition Auster at no extra cost.

I know that acquisitions are not what makes the world turn. I know that the words within a book are what matter, rather than the frame that holds those words and ideas. But the lovely books we bought in November adorn my shelves now, and I can't help it - they make me happy.

I am a book nerd, yes I am, and I make no apology for it.



Sue Monk Kidd - The Invention of Wings

I was so excited when I heard that Sue Monk Kidd had a new book out. I absolutely loved The Secret Life of Bees, and from the early reviews I read of this one I knew it would be good. I'm never quite sure whether the fact that Oprah likes a book means I will love it or hate it, but this time when I read about her enthusiasm for The Invention of Wings, the things she said about it made me hopeful it would be a case of the former.

As with The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd tackles a big subject here, writing about slaves in South Carolina. Loosely based on the true story of one of a pair of sisters from Charleston, who campaigned for emancipation, racial equality and women's rights, Kidd creates a world grounded in the household of the Grimkes, a large slave-owning family. Sarah Grimke is the privileged young daughter to this family, whose speech impediment and liberal conscience are born out of witnessing the gruesome flogging of one of the family's slaves. For her 11th birthday, Sarah is gifted with a slave girl her own age. Already immensely uncomfortable with the notion of slavery, she rebels against the gift, but Hetty - 'Handful' - remains enslaved.

Against all odds, the girls become fast friends, and the friendship that blossoms between them ultimately changes both of them forever. Sarah overcomes her stutter and her traditional Southern family's values to become a woman whose voice is heard across the nation. Handful, whose lively intelligence and fierce resolve stem from her mother Charlotte, the talented (and rebellious) seamstress to the family Grimke, becomes a key figure in a planned slave rebellion.

Sarah and Handful share the narration of the story as it winds from their childhood towards adulthood, when each becomes an influential force in America's history. And through these two strong figures, Kidd creates a compelling portrait of pre-emancipation life. During my reading, Charleston became a vivid place, from the docks to the industrial centre to the plantations and white-washed properties. The fences - literal and figurative - that surround both Sarah and Handful became almost tangible to me, so that I found myself filled with genuine anger and frustration at the walls that American society put up around women generally, and around slaves specifically.

In the first chapter of this book I was certain I would end up rating it five stars. The writing is extraordinarily powerful and evocative - just stunning, really. The central characters are immediately sympathetic, the story gripping. I read various passages out loud to my husband, convinced I had found one of my books of the year.

Unfortunately, the intensity of the first few chapters is not sustained as the story evolves. Kidd slips into a more sentimental style of story-telling and the book loses something as a result. However, the characters live on in my mind and the story is wonderfully rich. The realistic depiction of some of the horrors of slavery is appropriately horrifying - I had to put the book down, from time to time, to recover from some of the more gruesome episodes. I was moved to tears several times and desperately wanted Sarah, Handful and Charlotte to succeed in their endeavours. This is a big book which will resonate with you long after you turn the final page.

Overall assessment: This was on its way to being my first 5 star book of the year, but by the end I had re-assessed somewhat. Still a fabulous 4.5 out of 5.

Favourite passages: There really are too many too mention, but here are a few.

"It's mother, however, who descends the back steps into the yard. Binah and the other house slaves are clumped behind her, moving with cautious, synchronized steps as if they're a single creature, a centipede crossing an unprotected space."

"I would rove down the hallway to the front alcove where I could see the water in the harbor float to the ocean and the ocean roll on till it sloshed against the sky. Nothing could hold a glorybound picture to it. First time I saw it, my feet hopped in place and I lifted my hand over my head and danced. That's when I got true religion. I didn't know to call it religion back then, didn't know Amen from what-when, I just knew something came into me that made me feel the water belonger to me. I would say, that's my water out there."

"She laid the book down and came where I was standing by the chimney place and put her arms round me. It was hard to know where things stood. People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our hearts were pure as they would ever get."

"I saw then what I hadn't seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I'd lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil. There's a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it."

Gabrielle Zevin - The Storied Life of A. J. Ficry

I had never heard of this book, or of Gabrielle Zevin, until I read the glowing review on one of my favourite book blogs, Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity. I was looking for something light and short to read in between more substantial books and this looked like it would do the trick.

I have just now finished reading it and wanted to sit down and write a review before the magic wore off. Because this truly is a little treasure of a book. One that I will read again, and which I will keep on my book shelf and take down from time to time like an old friend.

Zevin succeeds in creating a wonderful world of people who come to matter greatly to the reader, whose fates we care about and whose legacies we will remember.

A. J. Ficry owns a bookstore on Alice Island. As the book opens, he is a widow slowly drinking himself to death and sinking his business to the ground. Through a bizarre turn of events, a baby is left in his bookstore, and his decaying heart blooms as he grapples with the basics of childcare ("She's a terrorist! She wakes up at, like, insane times."). A. J. adopts Maya, and the love he feels for his daughter restores him. After reading a book left for him by a quirky publisher's agent named Amelia, he finds his thoughts returning to her messy blonde hair and gauche galoshes, and realises that life may yet hold more in stock for him than he had anticipated.

The quiet world of Island Books is quaint and intellectual and peaceful. Although the characters here do not lead big lives, they are lives filled with love and joy, the point being that this is the essence of a good life. Ownership, materiality, employment - none of this matters, as long as one is blessed with love.

Zevin gets the pacing of the story just right, and peppers the narrative with literary references that will please any bibliophile. Each chapter begins with a note from A. J. to his daughter, a reading recommendation, and through this brief correspondence the reader is able to guess at what twists and turns lie ahead for A. J. Although this epistolary device could have come across as contrived, Zevin's deft hand prevents it from interrupting the story in a problematic way. The writing is soft and unobtrusive, and, at times, surprisingly humorous - for example, when A. J. tells his friend, Chief of Police Lambiase, that "Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no chance but to say you liked it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life." Or when, upon going for a run, A. J. notes that "There are many challenges to long-distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put one's house keys." Or when A.J.'s mother gives Maya an e-reader and he says: "I would rather you have bought my daughter something less destructive like a crack pipe."

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5. I really enjoyed this book, and it will stay with me. A crowd-pleaser. If you love books and bookstores, this is a must-read.

Favourite passages: "A. J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it's love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother."

"We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone."

"We aren't the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on."