The Giver of Stars

by Jojo Moyes

‘Hah! Round here, Alice, you get a lot of what you call sundowners. They’re good old boys in daylight hours, but come nightfall when they get to drinking, they’re basically a pair of fists looking for a target.’

Your skin’s thinner than a dragonfly’s wing.’

‘Maybe your hole closes up and then you can’t breathe properly. Like one of them dolphins.’

This town could polish a piece of gossip and preserve it like an insect in amber.

look that could have frozen hot soup

The crowd broke as they arrived, partly through the sheer force of Mrs Brady, whose elbows were out

Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be. Karen Blixen, Out of Africa