“According to Bernard, a great novel is a painting—a world offered to the reader who allows herself to be wrapped up in the immense illusion created by the author’s brushstrokes. The picture shows rain: you feel wet. A cold, snow-covered landscape? You start to shiver. Bernard would say, ‘You know what a great writer is? A painter. In the museum of great writers, to which all bookstores have a key, thousands of paintings await you. If you enter once, you’ll keep going back.’”
