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Article: Summer reading : Daria Donnelly.
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- June 16, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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What is it about gliding across steel rails at 60, 70, and soon 150 miles an hour that makes a body so aware of its solitude? Under that press, train riders turn to the strangers beside them, or to those found in books, for what feels like sacred company.
Commuting on the New York-Boston train, I've met three emphatically intelligent companions, forthwith forwarded for your summer pleasure: Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (Grove, $11.95, 402 pp.); Marilynne Robinson's The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (Houghton Mifflin, $14, 254 pp.); and Alan Garner's The Voice that Thunders: Essays and Lectures (Harvill, $24, 244 pp.). These are ...