In 1999 her friends, with their miniscule New York apartments and their ten-dollar cocktails, with their purchases of expensive shoes when their paychecks arrived, followed by a diet of breakfast cereal at the end of the month (“that time of the month,” witty Stephanie called it), had developed a gloss of metropolitan toughness which Diana seemed unable to acquire. The strange nature of this toughness was to demonstrate that you were having a good time in the city, that you did not apologize for or feel embarrassed by your pleasures. And Diana too had drunk her share of vodka gimlets; had slept with enough guys to form an indie-rock band or two; and had sunk several paychecks into such fancy vegan shoes that you couldn’t tell the difference from leather. It was absurd: one night out at dinner in her tall vegan sling backs, and cuddled up the next pajama-clad with J. M. Coetzee. Nor when she met Daniel and fell rapidly, gratefully in love with him, did he solve her contradiction. What he did was look on it with sympathy, with—if she is required to define that look—a mixture of condescension and admiration such as one shows toward the superior sensitivities of a gifted child.