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27da589
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This might seem excessive; ten years of marriage is usually enough to cure marital affection,
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Diane Setterfield |
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f2bb21a
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And is it better to know?" he asked me. "I can't tell you. But once you know, it's impossible to go back."
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Diane Setterfield |
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730a398
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The letter Q for question, seared into human flesh. As I started to sleepwrite my questions, the margin seemed to expand. The paper throbbed with light. Swelling, it engulfed me, until I realized with a mixture of trepidation and wonderment that I was enclosed in the grain of the paper, embedded in the white interior of the story itself. Weightless, I wandered all night long in Miss Winter's story, plotting its landscape, measuring its cont..
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Diane Setterfield |
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db1c075
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the wealth they had accumulated from retail needed to hide its origins, for it is well known that the purity of gold increases the further removed it is from labor.
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Diane Setterfield |
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260dadd
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Jane Eyre. Villette. The Woman in White." "Middlemarch,"
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Diane Setterfield |
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2dc7704
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Terminado el entierro, por fin podria llorar.
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death-and-dying
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Diane Setterfield |
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f8b885e
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Over and over. I was tempting fate. What would happen, I wondered, if the wall came down? Would the roof cave in? Would the weight of it falling cause the floorboards to collapse? Would roof tiles and beams and stone come crashing through ceilings onto the beds and boxes as if there were an earthquake? And then what? Would it stop there? How far would it go? I rocked and rocked, taunting the wall, daring it to fall, but it didn't. Even unde..
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Diane Setterfield |
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75b12fa
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I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child.
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Diane Setterfield |
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842da98
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The cat was on the window ledge, gazing intently into the garden.
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Diane Setterfield |
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29a8580
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That first second was long and confusing. The second, when it finally came, was sudden. The figure froze . . . swiveled . . . rose . . . and I knew. Miss Winter's eyes. Brilliant, supernatural green. But not Miss Winter's face. A patchwork of scarred and mottled flesh, crisscrossed by crevices deeper than age could make. Two uneven dumplings of cheeks. Lopsided lips, one half a perfect bow that told of former beauty, the other a twisted gra..
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Diane Setterfield |
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0740ac0
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the price they must pay for escaping their destiny.
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Diane Setterfield |
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deebf5d
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He has described in precise, measured words the beautiful desolation he feels at the close of novels where the message is that there is no end to human suffering, only endurance. He has spoken of endings that are muted, but which echo longer in the memory than louder, more explosive denouements. He has explained why it is that ambiguity touches his heart more nearly than the death and marriage style of finish that I prefer.
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Diane Setterfield |
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b4f5cd6
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turn all the mirrors to the wall.
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Diane Setterfield |
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ea6693f
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The storyteller gave me a sideways look. "Miss Lea, it doesn't do to get attached to these secondary characters. It's not their story. They come, they go, and when they go they're gone for good. That's all there is to it." I slid my pencil into the spiral binding of my notebook and walked to the door, but when I got there, I turned back. "Where did she come from, then?" "For goodness' sake! She was only a governess! She is irrelevant, I tel..
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Diane Setterfield |
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1c37752
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It's what my mother would say. She thinks a weightless story is better than one that's too heavy." "So. My story is a heavy one."
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Diane Setterfield |
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a132ea0
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Water, like God, moves in mysterious ways. Once inside a house, it obeys the force of gravity indirectly. Inside walls and under floors it finds secret gullies and runways; it seeps and trickles in unexpected directions; surfaces in the most unlikely places.
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Diane Setterfield |
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2cf6bf9
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In short, Emmeline adapted to her twin's absence. She learned how to exist apart. Yet still they reconnected and were twins again. Though Emmeline was not the same twin as before, and this was something Adeline did not immediately know.
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Diane Setterfield |
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f828453
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The beginning, perhaps. The girl without the mother. But after that . . . I wish someone could tell me what it means. I wish there was someone who could just tell me the truth.
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Diane Setterfield |
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c69141a
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For it looked as if the walls were simply dissolving in the rain; those stones still standing, pale and insubstantial as rice paper, seemed ready to melt away under my very eyes if I just stood there long enough.
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Diane Setterfield |
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542c583
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Quale sostegno, quale consolazione nella Verita, a paragone di una storia? A che giova la Verita a mezzanotte, al buio, quando il vento ruggisce nel comignolo come un orso? Quando il lampo sprigiona ombre sulla parete della stanza e la pioggia bussa alla finestra con le sue lunghe unghie? No: quando paura e freddo ti immobilizzano a letto come una statua, non aspettarti che la scarna e ossuta Verita accorra in tuo aiuto. Quello che ci vuole..
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Diane Setterfield |
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f4b9863
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Someone had told him once that the desire to do something well is a good indicator of talent.
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Diane Setterfield |
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3cc608d
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So much science has at its root the ability to see afresh what has been seen and thought to be understood for centuries.
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Diane Setterfield |
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c8b76b2
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Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then Iwas born...Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.
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Diane Setterfield |
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0975ca8
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However, in ordinary life, one cannot live by such principles. Imagine the time it would take if every aspect of experience had to be scrutinized afresh every minute of every day. No; in order to free ourselves from the mundane it is essential that we delegate much of our interpretation of the world to that lower area of the mind that deals with the presumed, the assumed, the probable. Even though it sometimes leads us astray and causes us ..
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Diane Setterfield |
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2e6a289
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Remember, this person burns books. Does he really deserve to live?
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Diane Setterfield |
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29ee54e
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But perhaps the answer is to stop writing altogether, for when I do write, even now as I write this very sentence, this very word, I am aware of a ghost reader who leans over my shoulder watching my pen, who twists my words and perverts my meaning, and makes me uncomfortable in the privacy of my own thoughts. It is very aggravating to be presented to oneself in a light so different from the familiar one, even when it is clearly a false ligh..
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Diane Setterfield |
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861e45f
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if you can only learn to see them. The truth had been there all along, only now had I seen
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Diane Setterfield |
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fc96dba
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Her presence could be divined in any number of ways by those who had eyes to see. Yet she was not seen.
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Diane Setterfield |
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35db9cc
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My words flew like birds into a pane of glass.
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Diane Setterfield |
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0a2aa33
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Oh, my poor child." I felt the touch of Miss Winter's hand on my shoulder, and while I cried over the corpses of my broken words, her hand remained there, lightly."
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Diane Setterfield |
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b111e26
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I thought nothing. The surface of my mind was perfectly still. But under the surface there was a shifting and a stirring. I felt the great swell of the undercurrent. For years a wreck had sat in the depths, a rusting vessel with its cargo of bones. Now it shifted. I had disturbed it, and it created a turbulence that lifted clouds of sand from the seabed, motes of grit swirling wildly in the dark disturbed water.
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Diane Setterfield |
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7f2fa54
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Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need to, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.
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Diane Setterfield |
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87a2621
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He was the first of my ghosts.
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Diane Setterfield |
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438a76a
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As we drove into Harrow-gate, the atmosphere in the car was heavy with Miss Winter's oppressive silence.
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Diane Setterfield |
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37890da
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There was nothing to see; the mist that hung in the air made everything invisible that was more than a short distance away.
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Diane Setterfield |
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8cb3444
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followed the thread of his voice in the air.
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Diane Setterfield |
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f8f2ef2
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Anyone would think you'd seen a ghost!
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Diane Setterfield |
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88e37ed
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undid my knitting. All those little knots that you make one after another, row by row, to knit a sock, I undid them. It's easy. Take the needles out, a little tug and they just fall apart. One after another, row by row. I undid the extra heel and then I just kept going. The foot, the first heel, the ribbing of the leg. All those loops unraveling themselves as you pull the wool. Then there was nothing left to unravel, only a pile of crinkled..
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Diane Setterfield |
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d8497b7
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The mist was almost gone. The magical shapes of the topiary had lost their charm and looked like the unkempt bushes and hedges they were.
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Diane Setterfield |
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785857d
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But you know it was here? In this house?" Aurelius shoved his hands into the depths of his pockets. His shoulders tightened. "I wouldn't expect other people to understand. I haven't got any proof. But I do know." He sent me a quick glance, and I encouraged him, with my eyes, to continue. "Sometimes you can know things. Things about yourself. Things from before you can remember. I can't explain it."
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Diane Setterfield |
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ead5a3d
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Thomas Ambrose Proctor!
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Diane Setterfield |
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abc460c
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And my own feelings? Shame. For I had lied. Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eyre over the anonymous stranger with his hand on the lever. Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life. Of course. Unlike Miss Winter, I had been ashamed to say so.
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Diane Setterfield |
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5ec0d96
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being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else. People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think about them.
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Diane Setterfield |
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4c63661
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holding up a single picture and studying it with a frown. She's seen a ghost,
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Diane Setterfield |