Extraits

Il sait que beaucoup d'étudiants en lettres voient d'abord la littérature comme un moyen de paraître cultivé.

Connell était si épuisé et malheureux qu'il n'aurait pu trouver les moyens de réagir. Les choses lui arrivaient comme les crises de larmes, les accès de panique, mais tout cela semblait lui tomber dessus de l'extérieur, et non monter de l'intérieur de lui. À l'intérieur il n'éprouvait rien. On aurait dit un freezer qui avait dégivré trop vite à l'extérieur et fondait partout, alors que l'intérieur était toujours congelé. Curieusement, il extériorisait beaucoup plus d'émotions qu'à aucune autre période de sa vie, tout en éprouvant de moins en moins de choses.

It was in Connell’s power to make her happy. It was something he could just give to her, like money or sex. With other people she seemed so independent and remote, but with Connell she was differenr, a different person. He was the only one who inex her like that.

Connell and Marianne both grow up in the same town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. But they both get places to study at university in Dublin, and a connection that has grown between them despite the social tangle of school lasts long into the following years.

"I'm not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me."

Denise decided a long time ago that it is acceptable for men to use aggression towards Marianne as a way of expressing themselves. As a child Marianne resisted, but now she simply detaches, as if it isn't of any interest to her, which in a way it isn't. Denise considers this a symptom of her daughter's frigid and unlovable personality. She believes Marianne lacks 'warmth', by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her. Alan goes back inside now. Marianne hears the patio door slide shut. 

Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.

Their feelings were suppressed so carefully in everyday life, forced into smaller and smaller spaces, until seemingly minor events took on insane and frightening significance.

Could he really do the gruesome things he does to her and believe at the same time that he’s acting out of love? Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence? Outside her breath rises in a fine mist and the snow keeps falling, like a ceaseless repetition of the same infinitesimally small mistake.

There’s always been something inside her that men have wanted to dominate, and their desire for domination can look so much like attraction, even love.