Friday, August 19, 2011

Favorite Passages
From Patricia Henley

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PRESS RELEASE
Engine Books is offering a discount on bulk orders of Other Heartbreaks for reading groups / book clubs. In addition, Patricia Henley would be happy to SKYPE with book clubs who read the book and want her to talk about it. In fact, if there are groups in our local area, she would be happy to attend.

Please feel free to contact Patricia Henley via facebook,
and THANKS for spreading the word!
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For my review of Other Heartbreaks
see my blog post ~ "Local Peace"
on my sort - of - monthly book blog ~ Kitti's Book List

Favorite passages from Other Heartbreaks:

16: "They toss little scraps of origami wishes into the fire. June thinks she should wish for World Peace, but she doesn't. She wishes for Local Peace."

69: "On Sunday afternoons, in the bittersweet hours from three to seven, they held an open house for friends and students and neighbors."

81: " 'We've been building a bridge, right? . . . I thought -- when I saw you -- that the last little bit of the bridge would click into place. . . . But there's still a gap.' "

101: "Her house was like a Carl Larsson watercolor, homey, cheerful, some earthy potpourri simmering atop the woodstove, the colors of her second-hand linens and furniture Swedish-pastel, chosen to ward off the chill of the long winters."

148: " . . . it's a fallacy to think that a mother can travel alone. If you have children, you're never quite whole again. There's a reason why they're called your flesh and blood . . . "

Another favorite from long ago:

"Sandra's love for Kelly is not the sort you hear about in songs on the jukebox. It's not desperate or crazy. They met three years ago and it was one year before they made love. Kelly said he wanted to get to know her first and Sandra thought that was a novel idea. When she remembers that year going by, she imagines ranging in the high country on a long hike, when it's tough-going at first and you don't know what to expect. Maybe you slip and fall when the trail crosses a creek bed, maybe the first lake is small, disappointing, but you push yourself, you glory in the little things along the way, the shooting stars and glacier lilies, the marmot whistling, and before long, just as you are simply traveling, putting one boot in front of the other, for the bliss of it, you come upon grand peaks and a string of alpine lakes so rare and peaceful that you imagine no one else has ever been there before you. It's where you belong. That's what being with Kelly is like. Easy, once you reach cruising altitude. Paradise, kind of. And ordinary. Common pleasures renew them. Razzing one another; watching a video in their bathrobes; dividing a foxglove in the fall; lying awake in one another's arms at midnight, waiting for Desiree [Sandra's teenage daughter] to come in from some breakneck double date. Love you can't imagine when you're young, when you think that love is you winning him over, a treadmill of pursuit and chicanery."

from the story "Love You Can't Imagine"
by Patricia Henley

Who doesn't love Carl Larsson!
Trying to achieve the Larsson Look in my own kitchen . . .

1 comment:

  1. Face book responses to "love you can't imagine":

    Maggie: Sooooo beautiful, just like true love is ♥

    Rebecca: Wow. I want that.

    Tana: Oh Kitti. I loved this. It came at a time when I will be celebrating 33 years with my best friend and soul mate on August 19th. She's right, love is a journey. We'll be riding a train into the high country this Friday to sit on a blanket in a meadow and listen to Country Western music. I'll be playing back your short story in my mind and hope I get to hear another Marmot whistling.

    Hans: ‎14 years in 2 days! A Vision Quest to find her. My Soul Mate to the end.

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