This book was recommended to me by an acquaintance who I hoped would become a friend. Although it's about a boy who commits an act of violence at school, I found it to be more of a love story to the narrators husband. It's incredibly sad, yet somehow not.
"I was destined to settle down with a string cerebral type whose skittering metabolism burns chickpea concoctions at a feocious rate...A strict vegetarian. An anguished sort who read Nietzsche and wears spectacles, alienated from his time and contemptuous of the automobile. An avid cyclist and hill walker. Professional marginalia- perhaps a potter, with a love of hardwoods and herb gardens, whose aspirations to an unpretentious life of physical toil and lingering sunsets on a a porch are somewhat belied by a steely, repressed rage with which he pitches disappointing vases into an oil drum...Back massages. Recycling. Sitar music and a flirtation with Buddhism that is mercifully behind him. Vitamins and cribbage, water filters and French films. A pacifistic with three guitars but no tv, and unpleasant associations with team sports from a picked on childhood....An over-educated man, my fantasy partner would still root about the soil of our idyll for seed for his own discontent [of course in a foreign land].
Are you chuckling yet? Because then you came along. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who tells knock-knock jokes. Hot Dogs- not even East 86th Street bratwurst, but mealy, greasy pig guys of that terrifying pink. Baseball. Gimme caps. Puns and blockbuster movies, raw tap water and six packs. A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure there are plenty of additives. A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks bicycles are for nerds. Fucks hard and talks dirty...Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up golf. Delights in crappy snack foods of every description....And, my lord, a Republican. A belief in a strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes...
But the biggest surprise of all was that I married an American."