A self-description by the spinster, librarian narrator of Jincy Willett's novel, Winner of the National Book Award:
You escape, said Abe Marx, into your books. I didn't have the wit then, quite, for the obvious riposte: I escape, when I feel the need, into what all you bullies insist is reality. I study birds, library patrons, local politicians. Sometimes I garden. Sometimes I watch the Sox. Sometimes I drink. I keep a neat house and I pay my taxes, all in the real world. But I don't live there.
She speaks for me.
