Sublime

rain.”

Nettie and he—a sort of perseverance, a persistent understanding. Where would Nettie have found strength for the unremitting concessions of daily life? She was precipitated from delight to lamentation without logical sequence, as though life were too short; she must cram everything in and perhaps sort it out later.

by a publisher, the odds are that as a first novel

scion

That Thomas had worked for the Chronicle since 1976 was easily established, as was the fact that he’d published three brief novels since that date. Out of a sense of delicacy Carleton never mentioned that he owned all three of these, and found them elegant and elliptical, couched in prose that had the cadence of the King James Bible, and concerned

his father had been a factory worker but was replaced by a small gadget.

Up ahead, waiting to receive them stretched an avenue—almost a colonnade—of maples, their branches and lobed leaves interlocking overhead.

Billy’s story ended very curiously in

careworn.