I bought Brian at the Brunswick Bookshop, a modest place in London. There it was—this slim blue book that promised to carry me through the city differently. Predictably, perhaps. Comfortingly so.
Brian’s life is full of chosen predictability: he walks the same lunch spot, the same streets, the same shadows. I liked that. I needed it, even.
Simone de Beauvoir is a stranger to me. Her exotic name is familiar, but I know nothing of her work, until, of course, I pick up the Economist at the airport, and open it at the review Fiction, feminism and philosophy-Simone de Beauvoir’s lost novella of friendship.
A woman, Maria, approached me at the Buddhist temple on Millcreek Drive in Mississauga, Ontario—“I feel I have to talk with you”—and introduced me to a female Buddha with toenails and fingernails painted pink, one foot stepping forward, holding a vase and the wish-fulfilling jewel of the enlightened mind.
“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.” ~Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The little girl rushed out, and her brother followed her. He seemed to have forgotten his original anger and wanted to join in on the fun of the magical flower.
