Shriver's The Post-Birthday World continued to delight me. It was so honest. That there are no perfect choices. That when two paths diverge in a wood, both have their merits. And we get to inspect the ramifications, on both sides, of a fateful kiss (or not).
Since I've already shared some thoughts on the book, I thought I'd just do special quotes instead.
She theorized that for everyone there was that one high you couldn't refuse, for which you'd sell your soul - and anyone else's. [...] Thus the only protection from yourself in this instance was never to try it [...] Yet here was Ramsey Acton, the one substance on earth that Irina Galina McGovern could not resist. She'd had fair warning in July, sniffed a few heady grains from a split vial, just enough to know that this was the drug that she had been avoiding her whole life.
Haven't we all felt like that? And a comment on 9/11 that is so easy to forget, and yet so true:
Much as it's worth recalling that for whole years of World War II no one knew whether Hitler might win, it would soon behoove Americans to remember that for a few hours on that eleventh of September no one knew if more plans might be out there [...] Now that the spinning globe on which we hurtle was clearly not standing still, anything could happen, and anything did
But here's a line, from a description one of Irina's children's books, that sums it all up:
Because when he looks back on his life, Martin realizes that he has spent his life doing something that he loves, and that, to him at least, is beautiful.
We don't only have one destiny. And lucky us, we get to see two of Irina's.
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