231 books
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342 voters
“It kind of sounds like the person tried to be loving, but the target moved,” she begins. “Or…or…they maybe just weren’t very good at it.”
― Loved and Missed
― Loved and Missed
“I was quite proud in someways. It would have been excruciating in the playground having people define you by life events you hadn't chosen. That didn't seem to have much to do with who you were in yourself.”
― Loved and Missed
― Loved and Missed
“There was a kebab house near where we lived, a family-run place very warm from the grill at the back of the long oblong room and from the heart of the Greek woman, Lena, who owned and managed it. I wandered up there. It was the perfect place to go after a day spent destroying things. Lena was standing in the doorway, protective, benevolent. She held out her arms. She had a tremendous atmosphere of courage. It might have been all that time spent in proximity to hot coals. I let her envelop me. I breathed her in, charred meat, rose water, oregano, freckled pillow flesh. I had the sense I was forgiven.”
― Loved and Missed
― Loved and Missed
“Life assembles itself on accumulating mistakes.”
― Bewilderment
― Bewilderment
“Lena knew Eleanor when she was little, serving me huge breastfeeder’s portions when I went in starving on the Saturday afternoons after my mother died. I was the only person I ever heard of whom grief made ravenous. I wheeled the pram up the three shallow steps, hoping the smell of the food on the grill would not wake the baby. I always had the same thing at the corner table, the special offer: cubes of lamb, burnt on the outside, rosy at their middles, with chips and rice and pitta bread and smoky onions and chopped salad and yoghurt and cucumber, and a cup of English tea. Kept me going for a couple of days then. I was eating for three.”
― Loved and Missed
― Loved and Missed
Michael’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Michael’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Polls voted on by Michael
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