Welcome to Litsy!

I'm deeply grateful for how--unexpectedly--compassionately and even admiringly the author treats Valerie, as an unmistakably cluster-B-coded character. It made me almost cry with joy.

"Bette pantomimed the "natural" intimacies of family. They really could and should have been hers all along, she knew that finally."
Mood ??

"Bette could make out Hortense's whining Midwestern twang, the annoying bleat like blowing through a sheep's bladder."
Today in odd similes.

""Shut up," he said to the silence. And it obeyed."

"Being alone means doing all the work: the thinking, the feeling, the fetching, the creating of events and activities, the understanding of those events and activities. The cleaning up afterward. There are no mechanisms of avoidance. All is stark, and so the lonely are very, *very* well informed."

"Appropriately a bird soared by. City birds don't fly at night, unless a certain freedom of spirit takes hold of their hearts. So the swoop of their glide means joy and the whimsy to take a chance. Or it could mean that a New Jersey gas tank had exploded into flames."

This book really surprised me. I didn't know what to expect but I found it was an incredibly moving story about loneliness, time, and relationships of all kinds. It also captures the energy of NYC in the late 1950s - the cultural and social shifts, the melting pot, and all the dreams gathered there, waiting.

Back to life, back to reality. Thank god for coffee and reading breaks! 😉 #currentread

I wish I could have more time trying this one but I didn't love it enough to push through. Oh well.

There would never be a paucity of good books. It was something always to look forward to. As dependable as the coming of an evening's shadow.

A codependent relationship between two desperately lonely people and what happens when one of them tries to leave. New York is beautifully written and has its own presence throughout the novel. It made me feel a lot more than I expected.

A quarter of a way through and the loneliness really grips you

"Bette liked a novel whose insights into the human mind were not predictable and yet, upon revelation, were stunningly and obviously true."

I like that kind of book too. A masterful novel just like this one.

These library lions were personal. New Yorkers climbed on them, scratched their ears, and leaned on their mighty trunks. Only a city dweller could eat a sandwich nonchalantly at the feet of the king of the jungle, while preparing for battle, sometimes by reading books.

Happy to be starting a book I've anticipated for months. Then I see it's dedicated to Claudia Rankine and my smile gets even bigger.

🏢🗽🏙🚖🚑🚗🍸📚

We're currently enjoying the newest dispatch from the incomparable Sarah Schulman, utterer of the immortal gem, "You have to notice the truth in order to be able to avoid it."