Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (Vintage Contemporaries)

Luckily, Mirella had gone out with her friend Giovanna, or she wouldn’t have hidden her irritation, since she gets bored staying home with us. She always says it harshly, without thinking that maybe I, too, am bored staying home with them on holidays or at night, but unlike her, I don’t have the right to say it.

He was a gaunt young man who seemed suspicious of conversation that strayed outside certain unspecified guidelines.

When Bill sneezes, it’s like a blast from an air horn aimed at your face. No matter where he is in the house, his sneezes are excruciatingly loud. Somehow there are two notes involved, a screechy high one and a shouty low one. It’s as if someone in the next room has spotted a bear and they’re making this high-pitched yet also bellowing bark of hyst