“At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Depart immediately to open country.
The tide climbs. The moon hangs small and yellow and gibbous. On the rooftops of beachfront hotels to the east, and in the gardens behind them, a half-dozen American artillery units drop incendiary rounds into the mouths of mortars.” (‘All the Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr).
What an incredible opening to a novel. Breathtaking. It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. I will be reading this when I am away in Provence for 10 days. I am staying in a villa near Roussillon and I plan on drinking wine (in moderation) and eating cheese like the dairy apocalypse is nigh! I also have ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Ray.