On the upbeat side, I felt it might be invigorating to square up and shake hands with a few of these fellow wayfarers—none of whom I really remembered—if only because of a book review I’d read in the New York Times. This was a review of a novel by a famous female writer with three names, a novel that followed the life of a character who’d lost all long-term memory (which could seem like a blessing, but not in this book). What the reviewer said about the novel had struck a resonant chime in my brain. She seemed to like the novel in a grudging way, and to substantiate her liking it, wrote: “What
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