Intermezzo: A Novel

The same desperation they feel, the same terrible gratitude, tender painful vulnerability, depth of pleasure.

Life, after all, has not slipped free of its netting. There is no such life, slipping free: life is itself the netting, holding people in place, making sense of things. It is not possible to tear away the constraints and simply carry on a senseless existence. People, other people, make it impossible. But without other people, there would be no life

She wanted him, yes, with a terrible desire that threatened to destroy everything it touched. Their friendships, families, both their lives.

Language doesn’t fit onto reality like a toy fitting into a slot. Reality is actually one thing and language something else.

Sense of all the windows and doors of her life flung open. Everything exposed to the light and air. Nothing protected, nothing left to be protected anymore. A wild woman, her mother called her. A shocking piece of work. And so she is. Lord have mercy.

Relish of mutual mean-spiritedness and high discernment.

You’ve had enough sadness in your life already, Margaret, he said. You don’t need me making you sad as well. And I don’t want to, believe me.

The name has become so precious to him, his own name, from the way it sounds in her mouth.

They have shown, they have demonstrated the possibility of these things, Ivan thinks, and therefore in a way proven to themselves and each other that their father is really gone, not only from the house, but from reality itself.