Breathtaking book of a doctor in the first world war. As always, Masons' style is sublime. The landscape, the people.
The doctor ends up in working in a remote village, slowly learning and discovering the devout nurse's background. More than a bland love story, it's a fascinating view, no matter how fictitious.
'Mother isn't anything if not blunt.'
'My interest is yours,' she said, now utterly still. 'You are how old?'
'Please, Mother. You don't need me to say it. I believe you were present at my birth.'
It occured to him that he had never seen a woman completely naked who wasn't on an autopsy slab, but decided this unsaid thought was best kept to himself.
Moreover, said Zimmer, to Anna's credit, she even volunteered. Of course, mostly she read war poetry, and when she tended to teh men, it was above the waist only and not on the face, and she didn't like any wound with blood or pus.
"What kind of wound is that?" asked Lucius.
"So Mostly she reads war poetry," said Zimmer. But still she volunteered.
Again he looked at the girl, and as a man of science, he understood how it has happened - the rain, the ghost, the chemistries of memory, the magic way that crystals appeared out of solution, before dissolving once more into its haze.
He began to walk faster, skipped, and broke into a run, colliding into a young couple scurrying off beneath a newspaper glistening with rain. Another collision, this time with a man carrying his dog. The crowd seemed to converg: a policeman in black oicloth, a trio of young men in bowlers, a woman heaving a kicking child. He pushed through them, now not bothering to apologize, as little eddies of outrage exploded in his wake.
