You spend a few days on either end of a trip to Florida with your parents. One afternoon for want of something to do you go shopping with your mother to Target even though likely you don’t need anything (or more likely, and worse, you do) then on to a large chain bookstore where she buys you a copy of the new Michael Cunningham book By Nightfall. She buys it for you because she wants you to have it, because she’s inexplicably ended up with two copies for herself mailed from the local library (she is worried that there was not a lengthy waiting list for this new book), and because many years ago you both were reading The Hours nearly simultaneously, but unbeknownst, until it was discovered offhandedly during a weekly phone call. It was after the novel was initially published (you bought your copy among the remainders at B&N) but well before the hype of the movie. A copy was sent summarily to your sister, and the three of you discussed it, an ad hoc familial book club, as you have with subsequent works. Because sometimes words fail when spoken (and more when left unspoken), but in the pages of these novels deeper truths can be expressed by proxy, shared, an emotional shorthand of sorts. So certain books now are thrust upon you, and you know better than to ignore them—The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Help, among others.
Certainly, there are worse ways in which to communicate.
