Nothing That Can Be, Can Come Between

Rebecca Goldstein Is A Rare Find Among Contemporary Novelists: She Has Intellectual Muscle As Well As A Tender Emotional Reach.

Four Or Five Years - Nothing At All. But No One Over Thirty Could Understand This Peculiarly Weighted And Condensed Time, From Late Teens To Early Twenties, A Stretch Of Life That Needed A Name, From School Leaver To Salaried Professional, With A University And Affairs And Death And Choices In Between. I Had Forgotten How Recent My Childhood Was, How Long And Inescapable It Once Seemed. How Grown Up And How Unchanged I Was.

Wasn't Writing A Kind Of Soaring, An Achievable Form Of Flight, Of Fancy, Of The Imagination?

Who You Get, And How It Works Out - There's So Much Luck Involved, As Well As The Million Branching Consequences Of Your Conscious Choice Of A Mate, That No One And No Amount Of Talking Can Untangle It If It Turns Out Unhappily.

It Was Common Enough, To See So Much Death And Want A Child. Common, Therefore Human, And He Wanted It All The More. When The Wounded Were Screaming, You Dreamed Of Sharing A Little House Somewhere, Of An Ordinary Life, A Family Line, Connection.