February 2009

I'm taking off for two weeks to a distant island. Sun, music, the whole deal. Perfect timing actually—I haven't been reading much anyway. Nothing to say when you're not reading, right? Maybe the urge will come back after vacation. See you soon.

This novel went everywhere and nowhere at once. On one side: an old bachelor with a greedy dog and a Portuguese housekeeper, obsessed with potato omelettes. The story sprawls, fragments, refuses to settle. I'm still not sure what to make of it.

Charity grows up in a grand Victorian London house. Her parents are stiff, distant. They hand their affection over to a slightly mad nanny who fills the girl's head with stories. Late nineteenth century, all formality and repression on the surface.

Five years after leaving the hospital, Stoney Calhoun has forgotten his entire past. So he starts fresh: moves to Maine, gets a cabin in the woods, adopts a good dog, takes a job at a hunting shop. Clean slate. Of course, the past has other plans.

August Brill is old, sick, can't sleep. To survive the nights without drowning in painful memories, he tells himself stories. In one, he imagines another America—one where 9/11 never happened. A country taking a different path entirely.