I am completely and utterly fascinated by Scott Spencer’s celebrated coming-of-age novel Endless Love (which has very little to do with the movie with Alex Pettyfer, by the way). Sincere and intense, the book is hard to put down. The writing won me over from the start – the narrative seems to flow out of its own free will, but to me every sentence is a pinnacle in expression, conveying an impossible amount of setting, character, back-story and emotion. It’s the ultimate show-don’t-tell’! I have been collecting some favorite bits to share with you. “Syncopated feelings? God, there is no one on either side of the grave upon whom I’d inflict that little phrase, except you.” “It was Jade’s genius to use Hugh’s own language when she fought him. Jade dressed in the uniform of Hugh’s troops and fought him from the trees and bushes, whereas I fought him like the colonial British army, straight up and down in a clearing and decked out in red.” “The jets roared, the windows shook in their moldings, and the altitude turned the world below into a joke.” “Surrounded by tragedy, overcome by everyone else’s grief as well as her own, Ann was nostalgic for her irony: she longed for a taste of it, as if that small space that irony places between consciousness and emotion contained the only air she could comfortably breathe.” “He seemed disturbed that I knew his mother’s family name. I had once again put my fingerprints on his past.” Of course context is everything and these are but a glimpse into a 400 pages of a pure delight! photo credit: danes96 via photopin cc