Activity

though this might make them sound virtuous but stolid, like dutiful commentaries on a certain kind of stereo-typically English reserve. In fact, despite their pace, they are not stolid

Add to this the novel’s several set-piece historical divagations, a motley anthology of attempts to reach alternate dimensions or point outside the confines of ordinary human understanding

It is hard to be happy when one’s husband is a mirage, a peripatetic legerdemain of a man, a deception of all five senses.

but all of her was curiously frowzy, after a way I obscurely associated with left-wing enthusiasms in politics and “advanced” banalities in art, although, actually, she cared for neither.

The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud.