Outside Our Small Safe Place Flies Mystery.

She Didn't Like To Be Talked About. Equally, She Didn't Like Not To Be Talked About, When The High-minded Chatter Rushed On As Though She Was Not There. There Was No Pleasing Her, In Fact. She Had The Grace, Even At Eleven, To Know There Was No Pleasing Her. She Thought A Lot, Analytically, About Other People's Feelings, And Had Only Just Begun To Realize That This Was Not Usual, And Not Reciprocated.

Books That Change You, Even Later In Life, Give You A Kind Of Electrical Shock As The World Takes A Different Shape.

Louis De Bernires Is In The Direct Line That Runs Through Dickens And Evelyn Waugh. . .he Has Only To Look Into His World, One Senses, For It To Rush Into Reality, Colours And Touch And Taste.

A Beautiful Woman, Simone Weil Said, Seeing Herself In The Mirror, Knows "this Is I." An Ugly Woman Knows With Equal Certainty, "this Is Not I." Maud Knew This Neat Division Represented An Over-simplification. The Doll-mask She Saw Had Nothing To Do With Her, Nothing.

I Was No Good At Being A Child.