“Time plays like an accordion in the way it can stretch out and compress itself in a thousand melodic ways. Months on end may pass blindingly in a quick series of chords, open-shut, together-apart; and then in a single melancholy week may seem like a year’s pining, one long unfolding note.”
“I’m reminded of how Mum’s collies used to greet me on the lawn when I’d come home from a term away at school. They’d never jump up; they were too well trained. They’d yip and circle me, not the predatory way they circled the sheep, but with an inquisitive enthusiasm, waiting for me to roll down in the grass and invite them to lunge, wrestle, and lick me. My parents might have had money, loved each other, loved me and my brothers, but it was the loyalty of those smart beautiful dogs, when I was young, that made my home feel like the safest place in the world.”
“I was in the shop well before opening time, browsing self by shelf through new fiction, to see which not-so-new fiction I must relegate to the less prominent novels & stories shelves. Because of that dreary human predilection for the shiny and new, I always feel when I make this shift as if I’m sending so many bright, hopeful creatures out to pasture before their youth is spent. Though I would never condemn them, as other shops do, to a section entitled literature, a word which to my admittedly over-schooled mind is ossified and clubby. I picture a mausoleum, filled with sagging armchairs and lamps that cast inadequate, jaundiced light.”
I’ve been curled up on the couch with the door and windows open, cool Fall weather keeping me company as I knit my latest market bag and savor “Three Junes.” These quotes don’t do the story justice; I am weary of giving any clues. This is one of the most well-written books I’ve ever read, and these quips are just a few that spoke to me for one reason or another. Julia Glass’ words flow so poetically from the page, I found myself telling a stranger in a coffee shop this week, “This is art on paper!” (Ever the poet, I’m not.)
I am allowing myself short bursts of reading so I don’t finish it too quickly. Her words blend together beautifully. I hope these yarns, when felted, will do the same.
~K