In my mother’s opinion, Jack Smoot and Seán MacIntyre were as different as chalk and cheese, so it surprised her that they were such good friends. Where Seán was outgoing and affable to the point of innocence, Smoot was a darker and more reticent figure, given, she would discover, to prolonged periods of brooding and introspection that occasionally veered toward despair. “The world,” he would remark to her a few weeks into their acquaintance, “is a terrible place and it was our misfortune to be have been born into it.”
These 2 characters become important later. Good to know how they are described initially.
