From Out Of The City

John Kelly

First Sentence:     We all know what happened.

Back of the book:

This intriguing novel brings us to a future in which electricity is scarce and Dublin has gone to seed. Hawk-eyed octogenarian Monk is keeping assorted desperate characters under strict surveillance — among them Schroeder, recently sacked from Trinity College, now stalking a reporter in the days leading up to the visit of the U. S. President. When the unthinkable happens and the President is assassinated, Monk sets about discovering what’s happened to those in his care and, along the way, to the late President — but this is not, he insists, the story of an assassination. Nor is it a thriller. It’s the truth.

Quotes from the book:

[…] savouring the pre-kiss silence—that prelude which he then believed to be the most intense moment available to a human being. The split-second preparation, the offer and acceptance, the soft collision and the spinning taste of darkness.

“[…] she claimed to be looking for exactly the same thing in life as he was—no more than some manageable blend of comfort and kicks.”

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The Faster I Walk The Smaller I Am

Kjersti A. Skomsvold

First Sentence: I like it when I can be done with something.

This book will turn you inside out:

I identify with bananas, for not only am I hunched over, I’ve also got a flower without sex organs and fruit without seed, and therefore I am, according to Buddha, meaningless. And I also believe Buddha was on to something where the hopelessness of all earthly endeavors is concerned, because I feel hopeless; I stole from the grocery store, gave Age B. the time, buried a time capsule, baked rolls, turned up the hot plate, tried to plan my own funeral, tried to become a tree, and then the most difficult thing of all – I used the telephone, which was really too much for me – and yet I’m still sitting here in my apartment and I’m just as afraid of living life as I am of dying. And wasn’t it Buddha who also said that everything is suffering, and I think that if I’d been religious, I would’ve been a Buddhist, and If I’d been a fruit, I would’ve been a banana.

This book will destroy you:

I put my groceries on the counter and the boy keeps talking to the girl as he scans them. He picks up the jam and beeps it across, but I don’t have the courage to ask him to open it. He doesn’t tell me how much it costs, but I can see the number on the screen. When I give him my money, I touch the palm of his hand, but he doesn’t notice. I brought a net bag with me, I won’t ask him for one of the grocery bags under the counter or wonder what else he’s keeping down there. I just pack my groceries into my bag and go. And if I was kidnapped five minutes later, and the cops came by and showed him my picture, the boy would say he’d never seen me before in his life.

Read it.

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