Sunday, December 30, 2012

Last (Literary) Lines for 2012

Stealing this idea from NPR librarian Kee Malesky, who closes out the year by sharing last lines from classic novels. Too difficult a task to think of my all-time favorite, so I limited my search to the books I read in 2012. The winner for me was Junot Diaz's THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER. Here's how he ends it:


You bust out a couple more things. Then you put your head down.
The next day you look at the new pages. For once you don't want to burn them or give up writing forever.
It's a start, you say to the room.
That's about it. In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace--and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.