A Return to (some) Favorite Books

There hadn't been time in a long time to return to my shelf of books, but this morning I did. I felt like I do on those Saturday mornings when I leave in the near-dark for the Farmer's Market and stand (in advance of jostling crowds) before cases of fresh cheese, fat shrimp, silk chocolate, blueberry muffins. Rich. That's how I felt.

I pulled Elizabeth Graver's Awake to my lap and read again the last 50 or so pages—one of the finest renderings of maternal guilt and regret that I have ever read. I pulled down Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor was Divine and decided to read it all the way through again tomorrow, so that I could remember fully why I loved it so much a few years ago. I took Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses into my hands, and resolved to read it again on Sunday. I returned to The Cellist of Sarajevo and remembered: Another book of multiple voices, masterfully done.

And then I started reading Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy, and oh my, truly. Have you ever seen so much poetry in a novel's opening lines? Almost like reading Carole Maso's Ava—every detail an awakening, a surprise.

For you today, then, from Hansen:

Crickets.

Mooncreep and spire.

Ears are flattened to the head of a stone panther water spout....

Tallow candles in red glass jars shudder on a high altar.

White hallway and dark mahogany joists. Wide plank floors walked soft and smooth as soap.

Wide plank floors walked soft and smooth as soap.