The Sisters Brothers

He read the suicide story twice against the racket of steel blades grinding single estate beans. Something rankled. There was a prolonged and dangerous-sounding hissing, and a solitary stream of espresso poured into a white cup. Edward Fellowes jumped from the bridge late on Thursday night. But there were any number of bridges along the Tyne, why w

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Clingstone’s gaze turned inward, and more gently she said, “It never occurs to people that maybe I’d like to be the reckless one. The disrupter! As the years have passed, I have discovered in myself this . . . energy. Is it anger? A touch of spite? I’m not sure.” She looked back toward the restaurant. The beans on their strings were rippling on a b

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Like Fowler at the end of The Quiet American, she is looking for someone to whom she can confess her guilt, own her complicity. But when she admits her deed to her father, Juan Pablo, she gets adulation in return. Klay’s prose is stirring and precise:

While he spoke, she stared silently out at the same city and mountains he did, but saw a different

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It struck him that he’d never been so happy, but was wise enough to understand that his happiness consisted largely of hope. Their meeting in the ruin had been intimate and strange, and had sustained his spirit for days; but quickly they’d reverted to their easy pretence of being boys with a mystery on their hands. So they spoke only of where Maria

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