Finished on 9.3.25

I loved this! I don’t have a ton to say about it, but I will say that I felt a strong emotional attachment to the characters and the story—I was very sad at the flash-forward and very pleased with how it ended. Upon googling now, I’m seeing some interesting criticisms that I did not think about when I read the book, so I guess I’m happy to just be satisfied and not thinking all that critically over here tbh!

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My favorite quotes:

“Up until then I’d felt fairly calm about the test. My secret hope had been to fall short of a Conseil apprenticeship and settle into a quiet job like hers. I hadn’t realized that my opportunities would be more limited the sooner I was cut, and so, for the rest of the evening, I was robbed of the soothing prospect of failure.”

“For a while we didn’t say much, but like before, it was all right. The wine helped glide away the thought that silence was perilous, that someone needed to talk. Instead I listened to our footsteps drift into harmony and out.”

“My mother waited near the fountain in the square. As soon as she saw me, she readied her arms in hesitant triumph, and when I hunched in embarrassment, she threw them in the air.”

“With her silences, she seemed always to say: You see, I’m right, you squandered your life. With my silence, I would concede the point. But I did not really believe it. If my life was ruined, I had at least forged a tolerable nest in its wreckage.”

“Who could claim to be wholly free of fantasies? So then, I thought, if Alain’s wish was banal, what difference did it make if he’d spoken it aloud? Was it any less banal? I shouldn’t let a common weakness upset me just because I happened to know about it.”

“Thirty-six, good god, it’s practically forty. What is it with age, how sometimes a number seems normal, and other times it seems completely bizarre?”