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336 pages, Hardcover
First published June 27, 2017
The light of Ulster traveled not by particle or wave but by indirection, hint, and rumor. A kind of light of no-light, emanating from a sun so swathed in clouds it was impossible to tell where it lurked in the sky.On sectarian division:
If you tried to sit on the fence, you came to realize that you couldn't move, not an inch, for you would topple off and land on one side or the other, covered in bullshit. The north was thesis and antithesis, but no synthesis.On the slow recovery from stroke:
To see him do such simple things with such tremulous care and hysical trepidation. His eyes expressing fear, his fingers fiddling with a zipper. It was like the element he lived in had changed, had once been air and now was water, and the entire choreography of daily life had to be relearned.Laird's writing about Papua New Guinea is equally good, with hints of Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and Peter Matthiesen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord, especially in his attitude to missionaries, but still very much his own. However, I can't quote everything!