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The shop smells like cut stems and lemon-scented Lysol. It’s one of the few places in the city that stays the same, year after year, even as the lifespan of its patrons shortens and the yellowish haze outside grows thicker. “Six pink carnations, six white daisies,” she says to the florist, hesitates a moment, then adds: “And some green, if you have it.” With the middle-aged woman distracted, she browses the half-empty rows of overpriced plants. She detaches the arm of a miniature succulent and pinches a yellow pothos stem from the vine with her fingernails. A scrawny lemon tree…
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5/5 I purchased a copy of Sunburn at a bookstore called Novellette in Nashville halfway through my 10-day drive to New York City, and I could not have chosen a more riveting read to accompany me. Sunburn is a devastatingly beautiful (but not necessarily unhappy!) story of first love and repression. Everything about it was just gorgeous, from beginning to end. The characters, the connections, the setting, the imagery of the golden summer sun on skin. I was extremely attached to the main character, Lucy, and I saw a lot of myself in her. I’m obsessed with the way Howarth…
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I love you because your spirit flickers like a candle left by a window. I love you because when I think you’re mine, the flame blows out, and it isn’t so. I love you because you don’t carry on about wedding bells and vows and things, a love like ours, so fleeting and precious, should not be bound by any gold rings. For I will never darn your tattered socks or see you trudge about with a frown, and you will never find me tired and glum, wasting away in an old nightgown.No, let us meet in the very late…
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You know the line: it’s not you, it’s me. You were perfect, I swear. Couldn’t have asked for better. Even that one time you flooded out of nowhere, leaving me to drive to the auto repair shop with my pedals nearly underwater. Even when your cruise control stopped working halfway through my two-week drive to New York. Little things like these could never have stopped me from treasuring you, and please believe, they didn’t. You were my first way out. You were my first taste of freedom, my introduction to the idea that there are roads yet to be taken.…
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2/5 This book was interesting and well-written—it just wasn’t really my thing. It follows two sisters in New York City as they navigate situationships, new jobs, and the complexities of mental health. This would be great for fans of novels like Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Worry is more character-driven than plot-driven (it doesn’t have a defined plot at all), which I sometimes enjoy, but it just didn’t work for me this time. I found the main character to be whiny, self-involved, and mean. She did not grow or change in any recognizable way by the end of…
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When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everythingas a brotherhood and a sisterhood,and I look upon time as no more than an idea,and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a…
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“There is a spot for you in Heaven, but only if you’re willing to open your heart like a door to Him,” Pastor Samuel had said that morning in his East Texas drawl, leaning on his podium. “Open your heart and let Him in.” Susannah was trying. She wanted to be close to Him. She saw the joy in her friends’ eyes when they spoke of their journeys. “I was afraid to let Him in,” Isabella told her, “but when I did, it was like I turned into this whole new person. A whole new me.” Sarah, Susannah’s best friend…
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4/5 I’m a few weeks late posting my review for this one! I read One Last Stop at the beginning of summer, about a month before I left Austin for New York. This book is a romance, time travel novel, and love letter to the NYC public transportation system all in one, and its heavy-handed over-romanticization of the subway system is just what I needed before my big move. I always prefer a romance with a non-romantic primary plot, and the time travel elements of One Last Stop did not disappoint. Jane’s trapped existence on the Q train is just…
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Either you will go through this door or you will not go through. If you go through there is always the risk of remembering your name. Things look at you doubly and you must look back and let them happen. If you do not go throughit is possibleto live worthily to maintain your attitudesto hold your positionto die bravely but much will blind you,much will evade you,at what cost who knows? The door itselfmakes no promises.It is only a door.
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It’ll happen like this: You will scrape the ice off the windshield. Slow, at first, carefully. You will shovel the snow into neat little piles for your kids to scavenge for snowmen after school. You will climb into the mid-size SUV, silver,and wring out your dripping wet jeans. You will turn the key but the car won’t start. The car won’t start. You will sigh, and sit back, and sigh. You will sit for a long time. You will think about the failures that preceded this one and the minor destinies that led you to this episode of the multiverse. You’ll think about your wife, 29, blonde hair, brown eyes, five-foot-five in her kitten…
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