Month: June 2022

Read for Second Monday book group. I loved it, not surprisingly as I find Patchett’s writing enchanting (although I threw Bel Canto across the room after reading it because I was so upset by the ending!).

• “[My sister’s] hair was long and black and as thick as ten horse tails tied together. No amount of brushing ever made it look brushed.”
• “The linden trees kept us from seeing anything except the linden trees.”
• “To list the things I didn’t ask my father about would be to list the stars in heaven.”
• “I thought of them as a single unit: Norma-and-Bright, like an advertising agency consisting of two small girls.”
• Fluffy, prone to blushing: “This was a woman whose biology betrayed her at every turn. Emotions stormed across her face with a flag.”
• “Fluffy, who had not stopped talking since I walked in the door, shut down like a mechanical horse in need of another nickel.”
• “When she walked away, she turned back to look at me so many times she appeared to be going up the sidewalk in a loose series of concentric circles.”
• “‘You’re picking the woman you like the best from a group of women you don’t like,’ Maeve said. “Your control group is fundamentally flawed.'”
• “She had so much energy. I had forgotten the way she was in the morning, like each new day came in on a wave she had managed to catch.”
• “Her wrist looked like ten pencils bundled together.”
• “Though I had been a doctor for only a short time, I knew the havoc the well could unleash upon the sick.”
• “Men leave their children all the time and the world celebrates them for it. The Buddha left and Odysseus left and no one gave a shit about their sons. They set out on their noble journeys to do whatever the hell they wanted to do and thousands of years later we’re still singing about it.”