之前從未讀過作者 Kim Edwards 的作品，這次真是驚喜萬分。她的筆觸細膩而又不落瑣碎，故事平實中有起伏，沒有吊人胃口的情節，卻讓人不其然的追下去看她那絲絲入扣的編排。書中更有很多給人反思的地方，實在是一本不容錯過的好書，且讓我節錄幾段給大家欣賞 ...
"The sleeve of her green coat brushed his and he smelled her perfume, something delicate and yet pervasive, something like the dense pale petals of lilacs outside the window of the student rooms he'd once occupied in Pittsburgh. The squat windows of his basement apartment were always grimy, opaque with steel-factory soot and ash, but in the spring there were lilacs blooming, sprays of white and lavender pressing against the glass, their scent drifting in like light." （男主角初次邂逅女主角的情景）
"His hands were on her shoulders then, and for an instant she stood again amid the sound of rushing water from the mill, happiness as full around her as the night. Don't breathe, she thought. Don't move. But there was no stopping anything. Outside, rain fell softly, and seeds stirred in the shifted in his sleep. He world wake tomorrow, grow, and change. They'd live their lives day by day, each one taking their another step away from their lost daughter."
"These days Caroline often longed for her own mother, dead almost ten years now, wishing she could call her up and ask advice or simply stop by to see her hold Phoebe (her daughter) in her arms. Had her mother felt all this --- the love and the frustration --- as Caroline grew up? She must have, and suddenly Caroline understood her childhood differently. The constant worry about polio --- that, in its own strange way, was love. And her father's hard work, his careful concentration on their finances at night --- that was love as well."
"David watched her (Rosemary) go, trying to fix this moment --- the vivid backpack, her hair swinging against her back, Jack's free hand reaching out to grab leaves and sticks --- forever in his mind. It was futile, of course; he was forgetting things with every step she took. Sometimes his photographs amazed him, pictures he came across stored in old boxes or folders, moments he could not remember even when he saw them: himself laughing with people whose names he had forgotten, Paul (his son) wearing an expression David had never seen in life. And what would he have of this moment in another year, in five? The sun in Rosemary's hair, and the dirt beneath her fingernails, and the faint clean scent of soap.
And somehow, that would be enough."
"The world was a vast and unpredictable and sometimes frightening place. But right now her daughter was in the kitchen, laughing with her boyfriend, and her husband dozed with a book in his lap, and she didn't have to cook dinner. She took a deep breath. The air hold the distant scent of roses --- a clean scent, fresh as snow."
"The books he had read over the weekend, all those clinical accounts --- none of this had prepared him for the real human being whose hand brushed so lightly against his face."
"Her voice, high and clear, moved through the leaves, through the sunlight. Its splashed onto the gravel, the grass. He imagined the notes falling into the air like stones into water, rippling the invisible surface of the world. Wave of sound, wave of light: his father had tried to pin everything down but the world was fluid and could not be contained."
實在不能盡錄，如果香港有這樣出色的作家，我們的文化生活會是多麼的充實！
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