the last book I ever read (Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler, excerpt five)

from Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler (Imogen Taylor, Translator):

“Do you have any glucose?” I asked. I’d heard that glucose and sports drinks were good for dehydration.

“No, I don’t have any glucose!” she screamed. “It wasn’t my idea to go on this crazy journey! I had no idea what I was getting myself into!”

I was familiar with this—the mood swings, the accusations. It was like hearing my mother talk in Dori’s voice, overwhelmed by everything. I couldn’t expect her to make decisions.

the last book I ever read (Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler, excerpt four)

from Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler (Imogen Taylor, Translator):

“It must have been hard to combine an acting career with motherhood,” I said. “All those rehearsals and performances.”

She shook her head. “That wasn’t so much the problem. I just couldn’t act anymore. I couldn’t do it.” She lit another cigarette. I imagined her on stage, speaking someone else’s words, her heavily made-up face in the bright light. Before today I couldn’t have imagined it. I remembered what she’d said on our walk about being a different person before she got married.

“I thought it would come back; I thought, give it a few weeks or months and it would come back. But it didn’t. My craft, the thing I was good at—it was gone.” She opened her palms a little, as if it were vanishing then and there. As if to show they were empty. “The emotions, the empathy. The ability to get inside another person, to feel their love, their despair.” She paused and looked down at her firm white fingers, lying open on the photos of old Bad Heim.

the last book I ever read (Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler, excerpt three)

from Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler (Imogen Taylor, Translator):

After supper I hung around in the dining room, hoping the woman would come out of her room again, as she sometimes did after putting Ilya to bed. I wanted to tell her about finding Ilya alone by the river. I waited a long time, but she didn’t come that evening. Once I thought I heard something, but when I looked out the terrace door, the garden was empty in the warm night. All was still, even the forest. The sky over the hotel was a gray pall. I looked for the moon but couldn’t find it.

the last book I ever read (Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler, excerpt two)

from Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler (Imogen Taylor, Translator):

It was going to be another hot day. The sky hung low over the woods, but the wind was coming from town and blew in warm gusts over the field and pond. The maple was swaying, its red leaves spinning through the air toward the forest. I imagined the situation there changing with the wind—orders being yelled, reporters and activists being moved on by the fire brigade, having to regroup. I thought of the girl with the short hair. I imagined tents and banners being packed up in a hurry, the protesters toiling through the forest, keeping an eye on one another.

Everyone here was familiar with the diagrams. A cross to mark the position of the fire brigade, a blue arrowhead to represent the fire driven by the wind, and along the sides of this arrow—the red zones. No one who was in these zones when the wind changed could escape the fire on foot. It was here that the two men had been caught by the flames—the men whose deaths had brought the fires to the attention of the international media. I don’t know why there was no talk of zones or wind direction before—maybe the fires hadn’t been as intense, maybe people were just lucky. Before those men died, the fire was seen as a local problem—a new phenomenon, to be sure, but part of the natural succession of the forest. A result of the hot summer, the drought. Over when fall came. We didn’t even have words for what was happening. It was only afterward that people started talking about the dead man zone, a term that would change our perception of what was going on in the forest.

the last book I ever read (Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler, excerpt one)

from Eternal Summer: A Novel by Franziska Gänsler (Imogen Taylor, Translator):

Ash was lighter than ordinary dust. It had a habit of clinging, and when you brushed it off it immediately settled again. I quietly swept my way back to the other end of the veranda. A smoldering leaf drifted down in front of me and landed on the wooden balustrade. It had retained its curved shape, but between the black veins was nothing but white, burned-out cells. I propped the broom against the wall, carefully picked up the leaf, and carried it to the child, cupping it in my hands to protect it from the wind.

the last book I ever read (Property: A Novel by Valerie Martin, excerpt seven)

from Property: A Novel by Valerie Martin:

When I left my aunt’s, I walked to the Faubourg Marigny to leave a pair of shoes with the shoemaker there. That neighborhood is populated largely by free negroes, and a more arrogant and supercilious group could hardly be found. As I went among them, I found myself turning again and again to follow a figure or face that resembled Sarah’s. A man in a bright yellow frock coat approached me, his eyes meeting mine with perfect insolence, and for a moment I thought it must be Mr. Roget, though I had had such a brief glimpse of this person it was unlikely that I would recognize him. Was Sarah in hiding behind one of these simple house-fronts? Was Mr. Roget even now writing to her with further instructions for their eventual reunion?

the last book I ever read (Property: A Novel by Valerie Martin, excerpt six)

from Property: A Novel by Valerie Martin:

I bent over the offensive scrawl, trying to make out a sentence. Captain Wash ceen only won child as caut. “What does this mean?” I exclaimed.

My aunt examined the sentence. “Mr. Leggett takes an original approach to spelling and punctuation,” she observed.