I read this book because both of my roommates love Jennifer Egan's writing and I trust their judgment. I also read this book because I left my hotel on one beautiful weekend morning this fall without a book and when I came to Washington Square park and sat on a bench in the sun I decided the day was too nice not to get in some good reading, so I walked to the closest B&N and bought a book. It happened to be this one.

I think that I will read more Jennifer Egan. The plot of this book always kept me interested but wasn't always very relatable. The main characters are an ex-model, a 15 yr old girl, and a crazy middle aged man. I can kind of see where they're coming from because the issues they face at their core are just human issues, but at times it all seemed a bit insane. The ending was pretty weird for me. Don't want to give it away, but basically I feel like the ending was both unexpected and unsatisfying.

I shouldn't be too hard on this book, however, because I'm currently reading two other books and finished this one first, so I must have liked it more than I thought. Egan's writing is definitely beautiful.

Favorite bits:

"I sensed her bitterness, her disgust at the grave miscalculation that left her now, in her solitude; obliged by memory and experience to love a place she had come to despise." -pg.6

"I had tracked the passing days in the obsessive belief that if I measured time, it wouldn't really be lost" -pg.7

"He wore old khakis and had a tired adulthood about him, a relief from the evil cuteness of boys her age." -pg.45

"We teach our children blindness! Not to see, not to think–that's what they learn in our schools. And the world is being robbed by it!" -pg.60

"For all the men who had drunk my brandy since Hansen, it was his memory I still consulted when I wanted to know something about men more generally." -pg.65

"I guarded what truths I possessed because information was not a thing–it was colorless, odorless, shapeless, and therefore indestructible." -pg.69

"The picture was coercive in its perfection. Pasta in the evenings, weekends tooling around in Hansen's baby-bue vintage Oldsmobile. Endless discussions of our love; its quality, its texture, its indestructibility." -pg.79

"I came to imagine my future not in terms of anything I might do or accomplish, but the notoriety that would follow." -pg.132

"I would submit that regardless of how many people one has touched in one's life, the very first time, whatever the occasion, is invariably interesting–to become creatures, rather than just voices and thoughts." -pg.162

"Even I wonder about this project sometimes–will it really improve people's lives, or am I just kidding myself? Couple of weeks ago I approached a guy–heart surgeon, actually–about become an Extraordinary, and he tells me , exact words, 'You're turning people into shopping malls.' I hardly slept the whole night, thinking about that. But finally I decided, you know what? If that's where it's going then I want to be there, making sure it's done responsibly. I invented this product, sure, but I'm not so unique–I'm part of a Zeitgeist. If I don't do it, someone else will. And maybe there's a positive to it, you know? Maybe the more interested we get in learning about each other, the less reason we'll have to do things like fight wars–we'll all be on the same side. So the next morning, I come in here, no sleep from obsessing about this thing, and guess what? There's already a message from the guy. The surgeon. He wants in." -pg.263 (reminded me of ethics behind facebook)

"Michael stood alone in the parking lot, an asphalt version of the empty sky." -pg.307

"In endured these indignities for a reason that was infinitely complex yet capable of being name in a single word: money." -pg.317