The First Sentence Of A Book Is

And Yet She Could Not Forgive Herself. Even As An Adult, She Wished Only That She Could Go Back And Change Things: The Ungainly Things She’d Worn, The Insecurity She’d Felt, All The Innocent Mistakes She Made.

Gogol Is Unaccustomed To This Sort Of Talk At Mealtimes, To The Indulgent Ritual Of The Lingering Meal, And The Pleasant Aftermath Of Bottles And Crumbs And Empty Glasses That Clutter The Table.

I Dream Of Writing A Book Like Lovers Some Day. It Is So Spare But So Rich. It Is History Made Intimate, And A Masterpiece Of Compression.

But She Has Gathered That Americans, In Spite Of Their Public Declarations Of Affection, In Spite Of Their Miniskirts And Bikinis, In Spite Of Their Hand-holding On The Street And Lying On Top Of Each Other On The Cambridge Common, Prefer Their Privacy.

The Sky Was Different, Without Color, Taut And Unforgiving. But The Water Was The Most Unforgiving Thing, Nearly Black At Times, Cold Enough, I Knew, To Kill Me, Violent Enough To Break Me Apart. The Waves Were Immense, Battering Rocky Beaches Without Sand. The Farther I Went, The More Desolate It Became, More Than Any Place I'd Been, But For This Very Reason The Landscape Drew Me, Claimed Me As Nothing Had In A Long Time.