Excerpt from Envy by Kathryn Harrison, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Actually, I was just looking over the crowd. Seeing what generalizations I could make about the class of 'seventy-nine."

"And?"

He shrugs. "I don't know that I've had enough time to study my impressions. You?"

She shakes her head. "Insufficient data," she says.

"Data? That's a clinical word."

"I'm a clinician."

"Oh, right. I'd heard you'd gone on to med school." Having read her bio in the reunion book—studied it would not be inaccurate—Will knows also to which school Elizabeth went, when she got her degree, and where she now works. But he's not going to give her the (false) impression that he's still pining for her. "Where'd you end up—what school?" he asks.

"Johns Hopkins." Elizabeth pauses, Will suspects, to give him the opportunity to compliment her for having been accepted by a top-flight med school. He dips his head in an abbreviated bow of congratulation. "I was in dermatology," she continues, "then I specialized."

"I thought being a dermatologist was specializing.

Excerpted from Envy by Kathryn Harrison Copyright © 2005 by Kathryn Harrison. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.