Rebecca Goldstein is a rare find among contemporary novelists: she has intellectual muscle as well as a tender emotional reach.

We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

He was looking at her with amused suspicion. There was something between them, and even she had to acknowledge that a tame remark about the weather sounded perverse.

Nothing that can be, can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.

At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.

This commonplace cycle of falling asleep and waking, in darkness, under private cover, with another creature, a pale soft tender mammal, putting faces together in a ritual of affection, briefly settled in the eternal necessities of warmth, comfort, safety, crossing limbs to draw nearer - a simple daily consolation, almost too obvious, easy to forget by daylight.