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Night Prayer
Louise Erdrich
‘It was hot and windy in the garden of Our Lady of the Wheat, but inside the convent it was worse.’
Bears in Mourning
Adam Mars-Jones
‘When I think about it, it was terrible the way we behaved when Victor died. We behaved as if we were ashamed of him, or angry.’
Ramadan
Mona Simpson
‘He took my left hand and banded a cleft rose petal over my third finger. I knew before looking in the book. ‘Marrying,’ he said. He’s so young, I was thinking.’
The Law of White Spaces
Giorgio Pressburger
‘It was beginning to seem as if his brother’s fate depended on him, on his ability, or lack of it, to learn the prayer for the dead.’
Time’s Arrow (Part Three): The Conclusion
Martin Amis
‘Your shoulder blades still jolted to the artillery of the Russians as they scurried eastward.’
Sitting on Top of the World
T. Coraghessan Boyle
‘It was like floating untethered, drifting with the clouds, like being cupped in the hands of God.’
Plastic
Graham Swift
‘Sorting out the world! He should have sorted out himself and his own jeopardized household.’
In Summer Camps
Jayne Anne Phillips
‘The sky burned white to blond to powder to an almighty blue; the sun fell unobstructed.’
Some are Born to Sweet Delight
Nadine Gordimer
‘She stopped where she was; sourness was in her mouth and nose, oozing towards the foreign stranger, she mustn’t go a step nearer.’