Bloomsbury Paperbacks

Of all the nations I have visited the U.S.A. and Russia suit me best. The people seem more ready to talk to strangers without being formal or disapproving. Is this because, like me, they have very little past?

There was nothing heroic in what I did next, dealing with the baby and my own car and the stalled nose-to-tail traffic that made the three miles to the babysitter’s seem like a trek across the wastelands of the earth—it was just life, that was all

They were stalled at the lights, a single driver in every car, the cars themselves like steel shells they’d extruded to contain their resentments