She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric. - Michael Cunningham

What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around the pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows. That was the moment. There has been no other.

"Mizzy has wandered into the garden. Carole looks contemplatively at him, says, "Lovely boy."

"My wife's insanely younger brother. He's one of those kids with too much potential, if you know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean."

Further details would be redundant. Peter knows the Potters' story: the pretty, unstoppable daughter who's tearing through her Harvard doctorate versus the older child, the son, who has, it seems, been undone by his good fortune; who at thirty-eight is still surfing and getting stoned by way of occupations, currently in Australia."

It's the solitude that slays you. Maybe because you'd expected ruin to arrive in a grander and more romantic form.