“Nothing was different or better and I didn't think I was either, but I didn't mind being alive at the moment.“
On the surface, this is a book about two strangers who come together to free the sea turtles from the London Zoo. But really, that is just a catalyst for a thoughtful story about lonely people discovering their loneliness and perhaps finding a way to be a little less so. A genuine, human, quiet look at connection.
cont'd in comments
“I'll never cease to be amazed by the fact that people uncomfortable in themselves can give comfort to other people.“
This book is so unendingly quotable.
Photo has nothing to do with the book, just the lovely semi-frozen lake out behind my library from today's lunch break
Maybe our constant fear is that a generation of children will come along and say: "This is not a world, this is nothing, there's no way to live at all."
"I don't know whether I can keep going. A turtle doesn't have to decide every morning whether to keep on bothering, it just carries on. Maybe that's why man kills everything: envy."
"Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it like Ahab with the White Whale. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone. Even in matriarchal societies, I doubt there were ever female Beowulfs. Women lie with gods and demons but they don't go looking for monsters to fight with."
Art: Nicola Durrant