Sara J. (kefuwa)’s Reviews > The Hours > Status Update

She looks older, Louis thinks in astonishment. It's finally happening. What a remarkable thing, these genetic trip wires, the way a body can sail along essentially unaltered, decade after decade, and then in a few years capitulate to age. Louis is surprised by how sad he feels, how little satisfied, by the relatively abrupt departure of Clarissa's unnaturally prolonged prime.

Going uninvited feels in some way like a minor demonstration of the world's ability to get along without her.

She likes to imagine (it's one of her most closely held secrets) that she has a touch of brilliance herself, just a hint of it, though she knows most people probably walk around with similar hopeful suspicions curled up like tiny fists inside them, never divulged.

... she ... knew it was going to be a difficult day. She knew she was going to have trouble believing in herself, in the room of her house, & when she glanced over at this new book on her nightstand, stacked atop the one she finished last night, she reached for it automatically, as if reading were the singular and obvious first task of the day, the only viable way to negotiate the transit from sleep to obligation.

Not eating is a vice, a drug of sorts - with her stomach empty she feels quick and clean, clearheaded, ready for a fight. This is one of the most singular experiences, waking on what feels like a good day, preparing to work but not yet actually embarked. At this moment there are infinite possibilities whole hours ahead.

These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius.

Still, this indiscriminate love feels entirely serious to her, as if everything in the world is part of a vast, inscrutable intention and everything in the world has its own secret name, a name that cannot be conveyed in language but is simple the sight and feel of the thing itself.