He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday—Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere—at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself—were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled
The Blog
Roundup: New Novels and Deprivation 
David Mitchell’s new novel. A bookstore owner burns books in protest of America’s lack of support for the written word. Um, actually, America supports the written word rather well, to the tune of 200,000 new books per year in America alone, so we just can’t handle the onslaught of the printed page. Also, depends what […]
Read More The Bomb, Dmitri … The Hydrogen Bomb. So I don’t normally post on BookFox about non-fiction titles, but I’m making an exception for William Langewiesche’s new book The Atomic Bazaar, which addresses the proliferation of nuclear weapons (if the title didn’t tip you off). I’ve been reading Langewiesche in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly for a while now, and his articles […]
Read More Open Letter Dear Ed, I miss you. I mean, the monkeys running your site are fun and all, but they’re even crazier than you (or maybe I’m just adjusted to your frequency of crazy). Certainly Erin O’Brien is crazier than you. Every post of hers is labeled with breasts. You would never do that, Ed. You would […]
Read More Train to Lo Wu Just read Jess Row’s Train to Lo Wu, a collection of seven short stories as streamlined as a bullet train. All the stories take place in Hong Kong, using the class, language and political distinctives of the city to ground stories about echolocation and Zen Buddhism. Luckily for me (and you), there’s a new Row […]
Read More Litblog Co-op READ THIS! The Spring 2007 READ THIS! titles have been chosen over at the Litblog Co-op, and you’re going to have to mosey on over there to check out the selections.
Read More Interview with Rattawut Lapcharoensap Rattawut Lapcharoensap, born in Chicago but raised in Bangkok, was just named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. Sightseeing, his collection of short stories, won the Asian American Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. In our recent conversation, we discussed the best Thai writers, how tourism is a form […]
Read More Another Atheist Diatribe Even though The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins was generally panned by critics (not just by Marilynne Robinson, although her dismantling in the pages of Harper’s was certainly one of the most thorough), his book sold quite well. Perhaps riding on the swell of attention Dawkin’s book received, now we have a book of the […]
Read More Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead Over at the Litblog Co-op, they’re discussing Alan DeNiro’s collection of short stories Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. Later on in the week they’ll interview Alan, but for now there is some discussion about the wide range of literary journals where his work has appeared (from One Story to Electric Velocipede), as […]
Read More Nathan Englander Competes Against Himself for “Best Author Hair” Award P.S. Nathan Englander’s new novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, came out last week, and hey, there’s nothing wrong with taking ten years to write your first novel. I loved his portrayal of orthodox Jews in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and The Ministry is supposed to have the same mixture of melancholy and […]
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