The Glass Hotel: A novel

This was the thing about her life in those years: some nights it was beautiful but some nights there was such pain, throbbing just under the surface of the evening for no discernible reason, and on nights like that she understood why Lucas and Renata did what they did, the dulling trick with the needle.

or because of course memories are always bent in retrospect to fit individual narratives.

of just having been subtly insulted in an obscure way that would take too much energy to parse, and as always he couldn’t tell whether the insult was real or just a typically Canadian case of postcolonial insecurity.

It was true, Leon could see it for himself, a steadiness in that column of numbers that appealed to his deepest longing for order in the universe.

“This is slightly embarrassing,” Alkaitis said that night, when they’d left the bar and retired to a quieter corner of the lobby to discuss investments, “but you said you’re in shipping, and I realized as you said it that I’ve only the dimmest idea of what that actually means.” Leon smiled. “You’re not alone in that. It’s a largely invisible indust

he imagined the confrontation so many times that it began to seem like something that might actually have happened.

There is exquisite lightness in waking each morning with the knowledge that the worst has already happened.

watching the first pale flowers push through dark earth in the springtime,

feel the old quickening that’s always come over me when a beautiful shot is somewhere near. I