By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed.

A novel is, hopefully, the starting point of a conversation, one in which the author engages readers and asks that they see things from a different point of view than they might otherwise.

She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.

While at Oxford in 1999, I met Jonathan Fortier, who is a Montreal-born Canadian. Despite the challenges of a transatlantic relationship, we remained keen on each other and eventually married in 2002.

Only weak men want women to be weak.

...it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see.

Perhaps. But the firstborn of hope is tragedy.