2025-02-15
score: 8.5
type: fiction (mom's book club)
i actually liked it. especially the second half. some of my favorite quotes:
Adina’s human body is too small to hold her joy.
If when I explain human behavior you insist on logic, we won’t get far.
Adina smiles at the girl in the mirror. The girl in the mirror, bound by physics, returns her smile.
Dogs, she faxes, are the best we can do.
HOW CAN PEOPLE FEEL ALONE IN NEW YORK CITY?
In the end, they break up for a common human reason: They don’t believe in each other.
One day, Adina quits her run halfway through. The next day, she walks her usual route, promising herself she’ll run it the next day but when that day comes, she enters the park in her running clothes after work, sees a woman hustling along the track, and leaves. The next day, she passes the park on the way to work, unable to look. The next day, she sees the trees from where she drops a bill into the mailbox. The next day, she collects mail from her doorway and retreats into her apartment.
Loneliness is a composite feeling: ironically unable to exist alone. It can contain anger, hunger, fear, jealousy.
She slides the unused frozen shrimp next to the little dog in the freezer. “Hey buddy,” she whispers. “We’re still together.”