When spring arrived his dad rode daily into Stonington, where the lobster boat
was moored. He awakened at four, revving the Ford pickup until it rumbled like a
B-17 on takeoff, its muffler shot from the salt air. After age twelve Falk
accompanied him on summer mornings, although he remembered little of those harsh
working days on the water apart from the chill of the wind in early June and the
bitter cold of the sea, and the way his hands and feet never quite recovered
until late September. Or maybe he didn't want to remember more, because by that
time his father was drinking and his mother was gone.
Within a year they lost the house and moved to the woods, onto a stony lot of
goldenrod and thistle where home was a sagging green trailer, the walls lined
with flattened cereal boxes for insulation. In storms it heaved and moaned like
a ship at sea. There were no more community sleeps. Everyone scattered to
separate corners, and his brother and sister escaped as soon as they were old
enough.
Falk sought refuge where he could find it—in the woods, on a cove, or at
libraries, the tiny clapboard ones you came across in every community on the
island. He took a particular liking to the one in the island's namesake town of
Deer Isle, not only because it was closest but because it was the realm of
steely-eyed Miss Clarkson. She demanded silence—exactly what Falk needed—and
brooked neither nonsense nor intrusion, especially not from drunken males who
came raging up the steps in search of wayward sons. In recalling her now, Falk
realized she was the kind of woman he would always be attracted to—one who could
glean the most from minimal conversation, as if she had an extra language skill.
It was a little bit like being a good interrogator.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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British Parliament asks Amazon to clarify why it pays $9 million in income tax on $23 billion of UK sales.(May 20 2013) Amazon will be called back to give further evidence to members of the British Parliament "to clarify how its activities in the U.K. justify its low corporate...
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