Each month, we comb through dozens of soon-to-be-published books, for ideas and good writing for the Review’s site. Often we’re struck by particular paragraphs or sentences from the galleys that stack up on our desks and spill over onto our shelves. We sometimes share them with each other on Slack, and we thought, for a change, that we might share them with you. Here are some we found this month.
—Sophie Haigney, web editor, and Olivia Kan-Sperling, assistant editor
From Barbara Pym’s novel The Sweet Dove Died, originally published in 1978 (NYRB Classics):
‘We specialize in porcelain and bronzes and small objects—you know the kind of thing.’ ‘Objets d’art et de vertu,’ she murmured, with a delightful accent. ‘Exactly.’ Humphrey bent towards her admiringly to refill her glass with the hock he had chosen as being particularly appropriate to the occasion. That this exquisite creature should have been exposed to the contaminating presence of the dealers, for the sake of some trifling little Victorian flower book, hardly bore thinking of and filled him with horror. A book sale was certainly no place for a woman; had it been a sale of pictures or porcelain, fetching the sort of inflated prices that made headline news, or an evening sale—perhaps being televised—to which a woman could be escorted after being suitably wined and dined—that might have been another matter altogether.
‘We specialize in porcelain and bronzes and small objects—you know the kind of thing.’
‘Objets d’art et de vertu,’ she murmured, with a delightful accent.
‘Exactly.’ Humphrey bent towards her admiringly to refill her glass with the hock he had chosen as being particularly appropriate to the occasion. That this exquisite creature should have been exposed to the contaminating presence of the dealers, for the sake of some trifling little Victorian flower book, hardly bore thinking of and filled him with horror. A book sale was certainly no place for a woman; had it been a sale of pictures or porcelain, fetching the sort of inflated prices that made headline news, or an evening sale—perhaps being televised—to which a woman could be escorted after being suitably wined and dined—that might have been another matter altogether.
In Jordan Castro’s Muscle Man (Soft Skull), a parable of professorial discontent in which a weather-related microaggression has spawned intradepartmental discord:
After Harold bungled this first encounter with Dolly, which had haunted all their consequent encounters, he’d begun to defensively consider “the weather,” especially in moments when he felt bad for other reasons. People thought that mentioning the weather was thin and amateurish, he thought, shortly after a story he wrote that contained a line about the winters in his hometown got rejected by a major publication, when in reality it was actually one of the best subjects to talk about. In our disparate and degraded culture, Harold thought, staring at the rejection email, where we no longer have anything in common, making reference to the weather is a gesture toward something we share, something that transcends petty differences. Mentioning the weather provided a frame to commiserate, share gratitude, tell a story; on that fateful day, Harold considered, the snow had fallen on both Harold and Dolly the same. However, mentioning the weather had proved fatal. Dolly, perhaps because of the lack of snow where she was from, Harold supposed, or something else, had decided to engage him in a perpetual, strategic conversation-dance to which he did not know the moves. Each of her phrases seemed carefully calculated based on some outside arithmetic: she said one thing but meant another, and the whole time Harold thought of snow.
After Harold bungled this first encounter with Dolly, which had haunted all their consequent encounters, he’d begun to defensively consider “the weather,” especially in moments when he felt bad for other reasons. People thought that mentioning the weather was thin and amateurish, he thought, shortly after a story he wrote that contained a line about the winters in his hometown got rejected by a major publication, when in reality it was actually one of the best subjects to talk about. In our disparate and degraded culture, Harold thought, staring at the rejection email, where we no longer have anything in common, making reference to the weather is a gesture toward something we share, something that transcends petty differences. Mentioning the weather provided a frame to commiserate, share gratitude, tell a story; on that fateful day, Harold considered, the snow had fallen on both Harold and Dolly the same.
However, mentioning the weather had proved fatal. Dolly, perhaps because of the lack of snow where she was from, Harold supposed, or something else, had decided to engage him in a perpetual, strategic conversation-dance to which he did not know the moves. Each of her phrases seemed carefully calculated based on some outside arithmetic: she said one thing but meant another, and the whole time Harold thought of snow.
From Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child, a horror story set in seventeenth-century Denmark, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken (New Directions):
There was a scream. And a refinement. The finest pattern cast by the sun through the grill of the confessional. And through the towns religious processions went, and chorused wonderful song. The year passed, and the years passed. And I was a wax child. I did not age. I lay in the ground and saw it all.
From John J. Lennon’s The Tragedy of True Crime (Celadon). Lennon, who killed a man in 2001 and is still in prison, has profiled four of his fellow inmates who have also committed murder. One of the men he profiles is Robert Chambers, who ended up in solitary confinement for long periods:
While in SHU, you could receive semi-contact visits in a booth. You could kiss through caged squares, big enough for pursed lips to fit through, and hold hands through slots. Or someone could pass you balloons of drugs. Sometimes Shawn Kovell came to see Rob. Other girls came, too. He tried to avoid having his mom visit him in the box. He got three showers a week, one rec hour a day. But they’d drape you in cuffs and shackles and chains every time you’d leave your cell, so sometimes Rob didn’t even bother. Plus, sometimes guys would randomly sling concoctions of shit and piss at you when you were walking down the tier. The cellblock carried an offensive stench, a mix of the worst human odors. Solitary in the summer was dangerously oppressive. No cell fans. They took all your property and bagged it up for when your SHU time was over. So the cells were pretty bare. But back then, Rob received a lot of subscriptions and fan mail. He kept a stash of dope to sniff. He read, did push-ups, jerked off, slept a lot. At a certain point, it started to feel like home.
From Amie Barrodale’s debut novel, Trip (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), as the narrator and her husband wait to drop their son off at what might be a camp, or a program for troubled teens:
A television showed the weather, satellite images of an approaching hurricane. I asked the receptionist where the other campers were, and she said, “The patients are in group.” It was not what I’d expected. Trip didn’t need to be at a place with patients. I wanted to put a stop to it right then, but I was so angry with Vic that I sat there thinking that he would do anything to hold me back professionally, and that if he wanted to play chicken, we’d just see who would blink. I was thinking this kind of ridiculous stuff when a woman called Trip’s name.
A television showed the weather, satellite images of an approaching hurricane. I asked the receptionist where the other campers were, and she said, “The patients are in group.”
It was not what I’d expected. Trip didn’t need to be at a place with patients. I wanted to put a stop to it right then, but I was so angry with Vic that I sat there thinking that he would do anything to hold me back professionally, and that if he wanted to play chicken, we’d just see who would blink. I was thinking this kind of ridiculous stuff when a woman called Trip’s name.
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