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On the way back, they stop at an old country hotel in Knocknagarry. Margaret doesn’t think anyone will see them, it’s too unlikely, there’s no use being paranoid. And indeed, when they enter, the dining room is almost empty: a young family near the entrance, an elderly couple by the closed piano. M…

Peter appears to think about this, and answers: Not if you were good at it. No. It’s easy to do things you’re already good at, that’s not courageous. Trying to do something you might not be capable of doing— He breaks off here, apparently thinking again, chewing a crust of bread. We’re being hard o…

[...] But on a number of other points too, Ivan thinks, his brother has long been a person of good sense. On the subject of how to deal with their mother’s boyfriend Frank, for instance. Or how to tell a waiter politely that they’ve brought the wrong food. Ivan has even observed Peter doing this. L…

[...] Feminists, it seemed to Ivan, were campaigning for a world in which men, far from being equal citizens, in fact had to give up their seats on public transport whenever any random woman decided to get pregnant, which happened constantly. That really was his view, at the time, which his brother…

[...] Do you like that? he asks. Look of desperate gratitude she turns towards him. What he feels also and can’t express. I love it so much, she says. I feel really safe. I don’t know. When it’s like this, I get this feeling. I feel so safe, I can’t explain. All over himself a strange rising intens…