Hello Beautiful: THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

When he bought a sandwich from a food cart, his voice was so soft that he had to repeat himself three times in order to be heard.

Nothing and no one existed in a vacuum. Charlie in his armchair in his house had been only one slice of his terrain. The wake had revealed the woman at the bus stop, the friends he shared drinks with, fellow poetry-lovers, nice men at his miserable job. Bitter relatives, stunned daughters.

She had watched her mother stick out her own marriage, and that path wasn’t for Julia.

had to tell her I loved her,” Emeline had said. “Even if it killed me. And I thought it might.” This resonated with Sylvie: This moment felt like life and death. She was breaking open, but still breaking.

He walked past strangers and cataloged their pain.

He felt like he’d handed his wife the muddled insides of his head, or perhaps his soul.

left. He knew that to get well, he needed to consider his wife, his childhood, and his failure to manage what had looked from the outside like a great life. He wasn’t ready yet, though. It was enough to simply know that the time was coming

“Yes,” Alice said. “It always takes me at least nineteen minutes to fall asleep.” She kept track of this, out of curiosity. She had to think all the thoughts in her head before her body allowed her to sleep.

Sylvie began to wonder if being on a team was a different kind of commitment than she had previously understood.