This is the best novel I’ve read since the 40 rules of Love, and it’s a really really different book. I am finding it enthralling reading. (Except for the typos, and there were a couple of doozies). Historical characters – snared in conflicting loyalties and pushed to the snapping point time and time again, broken on the wheel of tyranny -command attention from every page. Superlative. His prose has the effortful grace of a bird of prey taking off. He calls Hitler ‘the sleepwalker’. Yesterday I watched a documentary on the death of Stalin for more background.
Hymn sing yesterday at Tom and Peggy’s was wonderful, and I took a cilantro salad based on the one Sandra taught me. (oh god, the food she fed me…. it was amazing, stellar, eye popping, wonderful). Two bunches cilantro wash the hell out of them pick them over and chop. One rinsed can kidney beans, make em yourself if you can. A cup of walnuts, broken up. Rather more garlic than you would think necessary, minced. Lemon juice all together maybe three tablespoons. No salt, no pepper. I’m also going to try this with parsley.
Jeff and Katie went to Wreck Beach yesterday. I would have gone, but I put out my knee somehow and every time I go up and downstairs my eyebrows bob up and down and I puff and blow in a most elderly way.
I read mOm what I wrote in Madawaska and she laughed in all the right parts. Now on to more serious bits. It can’t all be waltzes and comedy.
