Every Last One

Zusatztext “Spellbinding.”— The New York Times Book Review “In a tale that rings strikingly true! [Anna] Quindlen captures both the beauty and the breathtaking fragility of family life.”— People “We come to love this family! because Quindlen makes their ordinary lives so fascinating.”— USA Today   “Packs an emotional punch.”— The Washington Post Informationen zum Autor Anna Quindlen is the author of five bestselling novels ( Rise and Shine! Blessings! Object Lessons! One True Thing! Black and Blue )! and six nonfiction books ( Being Perfect! Loud & Clear! A Short Guide to a Happy Life! Living Out Loud! Thinking Out Loud! How Reading Changed My Life ). She has also written two children's books ( The Tree That Came to Stay! Happily Ever After ). Her New York Times column "Public and Private" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Her column now appears every other week in Newsweek . This is my life: The alarm goes off at five-thirty with the murmuring of a public-radio announcer, telling me that there has been a coup in Chad, a tornado in Texas. My husband stirs briefly next to me, turns over, blinks, and falls back to sleep for another hour. My robe lies at the foot of the bed, printed cotton in the summer, tufted chenille for the cold. The coffeemaker comes on in the kitchen below as I leave the bathroom, go downstairs in bare feet, pause to put away a pair of boots left splayed in the downstairs back hallway and to lift the newspaper from the back step. The umber quarry tiles in the kitchen were a bad choice; they are always cold. I let the dog out of her kennel and put a cup of kibble in her bowl. I hate the early mornings, the suspended animation of the world outside, the veil of black and then the oppressive gray of the horizon along the hills outside the French doors. But it is the only time I can rest without sleeping, think without deciding, speak and hear my own voice. It is the only time I can be alone. Slightly less than an hour each weekday when no one makes demands. Our bedroom is at the end of the hall, and sometimes as I pass I can hear the children breathing, each of them at rest as specific as they are awake. Alex inhales and exhales methodically, evenly, as though he were deep under the blanket of sleep even though he always kicks his covers askew, leaving one long leg, with its faint surgical scars, exposed to the night air. Across the room Max sputters, mutters, turns, and growls out a series of nonsense syllables. For more than a year when he was eleven, Max had a problem with sleepwalking. I would find him washing his hands at the bathroom sink or down in the kitchen, blinking blindly into the open refrigerator. But he stopped after his first summer at sleepaway camp. Ruby croons, one high strangled note with each exhale. When she was younger, I worried that she had asthma. She sleeps on her back most of the time, the covers tucked securely across her chest, her hair fanned out on the pillows. It should be easy for her to slip from beneath the blanket and make her bed, but she never bothers unless I hector her. I sit downstairs with coffee and the paper, staring out the window as my mind whirrs. At six-thirty I hear the shower come on in the master bath. Glen is awake and getting ready for work. At six-forty-five I pull the duvet off Ruby, who snatches it back and curls herself into it, larval, and says, “Ten more minutes.” At seven I lean over, first Alex, then Max, and bury my nose into their necks, beginning to smell the slightly pungent scent of male beneath the sweetness of child. “Okay, okay,” Alex says irritably. Max says nothing, just lurches from bed and begins to pull off an oversized T-shirt as he stumbles into the bathroom. There is a line painted down the center of their room. Two years ago they came to me, at a loose end on a June afternoon, and demanded the ...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Anna Quindlen
• Editore: Random House USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 13.04.2010
• EAN: 9781400065745
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-6574-5
• Pagine: 320
• Dimensioni: 165 mm x 242 mm x 26 mm
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi