But as the weeks of writing went by, she stopped competing with that masterpiece. She shed her self-consciousness about words and began to write as if she were young again, talking to her friends, letting them in on the secret of an enchanted world that she had stumbled on by accident, just on the other side of a shimmering barrier.

The girl’s father, the redoubtable Wai, lay on his back on the cottage floor. His great girth mounded up above him like a volcanic mount, and bliss spread across his face as if the mold-covered crossbeams of the shack were the night sky itself.

He lay back in the wicker chair, drained. He wanted to watch an American movie. Something with superheroes in it. A dozen superheroes who struggle to get along with one another, but who, together, are unbeatable.

He wore that bitterness now like a ceremonial robe. “Why did you come here?” “To get you to come vote.” Behind him, on this cliff rise, was the ocean. Ocean to the left and right. In the direction he faced, more ocean appeared over the far end of the teardrop island. All the need of their world came down to nine square miles. He narrowed his eyes

I typed with one hand as I drank my orange juice from the cardboard carton and ate my wheat flakes in dry clumps straight from the box.