The Storyteller

by Jodi Picoult

There are all sorts of losses people suffer—from the small to the large.

You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

“It doesn’t matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.”

But my mother also would have been the first to tell me that good people are good people; religion has nothing to do with it.

the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.

“Your father may not be a rabbi,” she said, “but he believes in tradition. That’s what parents pass down to their children.”

When you can prolong the inevitable, it’s always better. That’s why, for a predator, the wilding begins with a chase. It’s not toying with food, as some people think. It’s getting the adrenaline level to match your own. There comes a point, though, where waiting is no longer possible. You hear the prey’s heart beating inside your own head, and it is the last conscious thought you will be able to hold. Once you give in to the primeval, you are an observer, watching another part of you feast, shredding the flesh to find the ambrosia. You drink in the victim’s fear, but it tastes like excitement. You have no past, no future, no sympathy, no soul. But you knew that before you even started, didn’t you?