The Emperor of Gladness
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Started reading September 13, 2025
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The hardest thing in the world is to live only once.
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Ramirez 47 written on
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Hartford, the capital
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is only twelve minutes by car down
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Gladness and
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called East Gladness. Gladness
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itself being no more, renamed to Millsap nearly a century ago after Tony Millsap, the boy who returned from the Great War with no li...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
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of To the Lighthouse on your lap, and watch
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under King Philip’s Bridge. A freighter bridge named for the Wampanoag chief who led a rebellion here
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September 15 in 2009. Rain
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He was nineteen, in the midnight of his childhood and a lifetime from first light. He had not been forgiven and neither
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leg over the rail and decided, like a good son, to jump.
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If nothing else, this would hurt his mother least.
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“Lithuanian,” she said,
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“Hai,” he mumbled.
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“Hello, Labas. I’m Grazina. Means
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his friend Noah, a boy
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the UPS jacket draped
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Just my mom across the river. But I can’t see her now.”
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“I messed up some things, that’s all.”
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16 Hubbard Street. Hai’s
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Grazina was diagnosed with mid-stage frontal lobe dementia in the summer of 2004—nearly
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Aricept risked
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“It’s Lina, my daughter. She
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reading Slaughterhouse-Five one
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into Lithuanian, a project
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but a sixty-tablet supply of Dilaudid,
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her stout shadow collapsed
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“My brother,” she cried in English. “Get him out, please.” She pulled on his shirt
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“No. It’s Kristof.”
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“What do you want to do in the future, I
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Looks like you’re some kind of bookworm.”
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“I used to want to be a writer. My dream was to write a novel that held everything I loved, including unlovable things. Like a little
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“You wanna be a writer and you want to jump off a bridge? That’s pretty much the same thing, no? A writer just takes longer
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the HomeMarket off Cumberland Lane
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scoop mac and cheese and carve up roasted chickens. When
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Vietnam. Though
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“And his name’s Wayne.”
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“I’m at the Meyer’s Center.” “The one off Lilac? That’s a halfway house. And you’re barely an adult.”
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“I turned eighteen on July twenty-first at
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Sony was born with hydrocephalus and
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Sony’s father left him and his mother right after he was born. “My sperm can’t make a retard,”
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Sgt. Pepper’s Pizza: A Family Place.
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strawberry shortcake?”
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so that when you’re banging the chick, right? Then, just when you’re about to pop, you turn her around and knob her right there, in the fucking nose. Then you just”—he made the gesture of an explosion with his hand—“psssssh.”
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Irish plower?” The
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This was clearly BJ. Six foot three with a buzz cut fade and shape-up over a forehead beaded with sweat.
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Maureen
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Wayne.” She
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Wayne turned
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