For several months I had been reading Ben Dolnick’s posts on literature, which I enjoyed greatly, before discovering his fiction. The Ghost Notebooks, a perfect read for this season, is what I’d call a literary thriller. Here are two excellent sentences from that book. As I was listening to it as an audio book, they were so good I had to stop driving to write them down:
“But morning always comes no matter what sort of a night you’ve had. This is an under appreciated fact.”
It’s that last observation that drives this home (not sure if there should be a hyphen there). And,
“So this is how homelessness begins. Not with a momentous decision but with a gradual surrendering. A rest becomes a nap becomes a night.”
I love the way that last sentence has an almost nursery rhyme inevitability. Sadly, he’s stopped his posts for now, but hopefully that will lead to more of his fiction.