I was shocked as I put this together that I only had one selection from The Winter of Frankie Machine, but all the other bits only work in context (and you might argue the same of this one). At the same time, I assure you I exercised restraint with both Russo and Harrow (and, yes, I typed that Russow and Harro initially).
The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow
He finds the boat, the Becky Lynn. The name tells the story—two guys finally get their wives’ permission to buy a boat together and name it after both wives so they don’t get jealous. Not of each other, of the boat.
Which never works, Frank thinks.
Women and boats mix like…
Women and boats.
Straight Man by Richard Russo
I couldn’t understand her failure to grasp what was happening. It was my opinion, then and now, that two people who love each other need not necessarily have the same dreams and aspirations, but they damn well ought to share the same nightmares.
One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue everything through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate. But to my way of thinking, we’ve worked long and hard to achieve this silence, Lily’s and mine, so fraught with understanding.
The student newspaper contains a lot more humor, though most of it is unintentional. Except for the front page (news) and the back page(sports), the campus rag contains little but Letters to the Editor, which I scan first for allusions to myself and next for unusual content. Which in the current climate is any subject other than the Unholy Trinity of insensitivity, sexism, and bigotry, which the self-righteous (though not always literate) letter writers want their readers to know they’re against. As a group they seem to believe that high moral indignation offsets, and indeed outweighs, all deficiencies of punctuation, spelling, grammar, logic, and style. In support of this notion, there’s only the entire culture.
There’s no bad side of the tracks in Railton, also no good side. The rule is, the closer you get to the tracks, the worse.
You may not believe me, but I’ve always liked you, Hank. You’re like a character in a good book–almost real, you know?
The world is divided between kids who grew up wanting be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.
Perhaps no man should possess the key to his wife’s affections, what makes and keeps him worthy in her eyes. That would be like gaining unauthorized access to God’s grace, we would not use such knowledge wisely.
The Rhythm of Time by Questlove with S.A. Cosby
Kasia spun around on her work stool to face him. There was tape on the bridge of her glasses, but they weren’t broken. Kasia called it an affectation.
Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani
“Justice served with a side of pineapple. That’s what I’m here for.”
“Do you ever worry about anything?” I ask him, dropping into a chair. I eye the table sadly. It has been cleared and no further refreshments have been set out.
“My next bottle of wine,” Kenta says with mock seriousness. “When I’ll meet my heart’s companion.”
I snort. “Aren’t they the same thing?”
I slam against the wall, collapsing in a heap on the floor. Now would be a good time to black out, I think groggily. But I don’t.
The Manifestor Prophecy by Angie Thomas
Dad hates books about magic. He calls them “fabricated tales written for profit.” Technically, all fiction books are fabricated tales written for profit, but I let the dude have his moments.
This Bird Has Flown by Susanna Hoffs
So what if the lyrics were a bit on the nose. Isn’t that the great thing about songs? They give voice to thoughts, and feelings, and urges one might hesitate to reveal some other way.
“Have you ever noticed that there are way more sad love songs than happy love songs?” I said after a silence.
“No,” she signed, ” but I’ve done a tally. I suspect you’re right though.”
Which might explain why I haven’t come up with anything great yet song-wise. But I am trying. I’m beginning to think happiness as an emotion is an anathema to song writing.
Did I just use “anathema” correctly? It’s one of those words that can suddenly feel wrong. Like “pulchritude.”
“Music is a conspiracy. It’s a conspiracy to commit beauty.” — Jose Antonio Abreu
To calm myself, I imagined my future creative life in Oxford with Tom, my very own Rochester. Except not rich. Or arrogant. Or twice my age.
“Life is but a dream. Except it’s a lucid dream and you’ve got the oars… Okay, so maybe you’re in some tiny, wooden rowboat in the middle of a great, big ocean. But you can still steer the thing. You can go anywhere, do anything.”
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
“Oh.” Juniper feels the hot flare in the line between them, fierce and defiant. Is that what mother’s love is like?a thing with teeth?
“What, like fate?” It’s the first thing Agnes has said since they stepped outside, and both her sisters flinch from the venom of it. “Like destiny?” Fate is a story people tell themselves so they can believe everything happens for a reason, that the whole awful world is fitted together like some perfect machine, with blood for oil and bones for brass. That every child locked in her cellar or girl chained to her loom is in her right and proper place.
She doesn’t much care for fate.
An officer arrives twice a day to hang a pail of something whitish and congealed inside her cell. Grits, Juniper thinks, or the aggrieved ghost a grit might leave behind if it was murdered in cold blood.
It hurts even to think it. They came back for me. She feels something snap in her chest, as if her heart is a broken bone poorly set, which has to break again before it can heal right.
The problem with saving someone, Bella thinks, is that they so often refuse to remain saved. They careen back out into the perilous world, inviting every danger and calamity, quite careless of the labor it took to rescue them in the first place.
That evening Miss Lee feeds them a cabbage-and-ham stew which Juniper doubts has done more than meet a ham once in passing.
She thinks how very tiresome it is to love and be loved. She can even risk her life properly, because it no longer belongs solely to her.
Questland by Carrie Vaughn
She chuckled nervously. “Yeah, I suppose we all like to think we’ll be Captain America, but most of us are just on the street trying to dodge falling buildings.”
“Why not be Captain America?” I said, too tired to be angry but too annoyed to keep my mouth shut. “He was just a guy on the street, at the start.”
Iron Gold by Pierce Brown
A new wound can take a body. Opening an old one can claim a soul.
“It is my duty as a free man to read so I’m not blind being lead around by my nose.”
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.
I feel like a kid who wished for a lizard and woke up to a dragon sitting on the lawn.
“I know it may be impossible to believe now, when everything is dark and broken, but you will survive this pain, little one. Pain is a memory. You will live and you will struggle and you will find joy. And you will remember your family from this breath to your dying days, because love does not fade. Love is the stars, and its light carries on long after death.”
(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)
