the last book I ever read (Bowlaway: A Novel by Elizabeth McCracken, excerpt four)

from Bowlaway: A Novel by Elizabeth McCracken:

Bertha Truitt was a mother, a loving one, but perplexed. Minna in her mother’s arms looked up. Anybody has seen it, a baby reading a face, careful as a phrenologist: that round chin means you’re my mother, that wide forehead means you’re my mother, that ear close to your head, those green eyes! What a scientist Minna was. What inventions and conclusions. She had the advantage. She had known Bertha’s literal depths, had elbowed her organs and heard the racket of her various systems. She had measured time by her mother’s diet and respiration, her exercise, and then Minna was born into the wide world and Bertha was so behind in knowledge she would never catch up.