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

...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen.

But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fashioned skill.

Novels help us to resist the temptation to think of the past as deficient.

A story lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken

But how to do feelings? All very well to write "She felt sad", or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put across so it could be felt in all its lowering immediacy? Even harder was the threat, or the confusion of feeling contradictory things.

Could it ever be explained, how matter becomes conscious?