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A novel of relationships set in 1940s London that brims with vivid historical detail, thrilling coincidences, and psychological complexity, by the author of the Booker Prize finalist Fingersmith . Sarah Waters, whose works set in Victorian England have awards and acclaim and have... read more

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  • “'I go to the cinema,' said Kay; 'there's nothing funny about that. Sometimes I sit through the films twice over. Sometimes I go in half-way through, and watch the second half first. I almost prefer them that way--people's pasts, you know, being so much more interesting than their futures.'”
    Kay
  • “'But, isn't it funny--we never seem to love the people we ought to, I can't think why...'”
    Kay
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • She supposed that houses, after all—like the lives that were lived in them—were mostly made of space. It was the spaces, in fact, that counted, rather than the bricks.
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • you’re too busy wondering how you’re going to feel when it’s all
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
  • other side…I’ve got lost in my rubble, Mickey. I can’t
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  • Was it a kind of idiocy or selfishness, to want to be able to give yourself over to trifles: to the parp of the Regent’s Park Band; to the sun on your face, the prickle of grass beneath your heels, the movement of cloudy beer in your veins, the secret closeness of your lover? Or were those trifles all you had? Oughtn’t you, precisely, to preserve them? To make little crystal drops of them, that you could keep, like charms on a bracelet, to tell against danger when next it came?
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  • she had nothing to do, and no one to visit, no one to see. Her day was a blank, like all of her days.
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  • She’d never thought of that before, about all the secrets that the war must have swallowed up, left buried in dust and darkness and
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  • Sometimes I go in half-way through, and watch the second half first. I almost prefer them that way—people’s pasts, you know, being so much more interesting than their futures.
    Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
  • Helen smiled. ‘Yes, exactly! And so you know, when
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First Sentence edit see section history

So this, said Kay to herself, is the sort of person you've become: a person whose clocks and wrist-watches have stopped, and who tells the time, instead, by the particular kind of cripple arriving at her landlord's door.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 78 of 100 in Top 100 Books That Defined The Noughties (Telegraph). (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Sarah Waters (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: Add the language.
Publisher: Virago
Country: England
Publication Date: February 1, 2006
ISBN: 9781844082414
Page Count: 506

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PR6073.A828 N54
  • Dewey: 823.914

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