The Overstory

When he looks up, it’s into the branches of the sentinel tree, lone, huge, fractal, and bare against the drifts, lifting its lower limbs and shrugging its ample globe. All its profligate twigs click in the breeze as if this moment, too, so insignificant, so transitory, will be written into its rings and prayed over by branches that wave their semaphores against the bluest of midwestern winter skies.

The Overstory, p. 23
By Richard Powers
Published 2018

Dept. of Speculation

The streets smelled like lavender and for a long time neither of us noticed that there weren’t any cars. We stayed at a cheap hotel that had a view out the window more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen. The water was wickedly blue. A cliff of dark rock jutted out of the sea. I wanted to cry because I was sure I would never be in such a place again. Let’s explore, you said, which is what you always said when I started to look that way.

*

Dept. of Speculation, p. 15
By Jenny Offill
Published 2014

Bitter Orange

I stood while he dropped everything to squeeze hold of her, bend her backwards, and kiss her. I didn’t think about it until much later but often when I saw them together it was as though everything they did had been rehearsed, not because they had me as an audience but so they could believe in a more perfect version of themselves.

*

Bitter Orange, p. 250
By Claire Fuller
Published 2018 by Tin House Books