The Vegetarian

the vague memory of an old emotion.

Only the violence is vivid enough to stick.

she staggered behind one of the metal chairs and hid herself, afraid that something inside her would make her throw herself in front of the solid mass of the train.

Time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness as it whisked her life downstream

Someone had to pay the hospital fees, someone had to act as her carer.

And she got by, as she always had done. Despite the scandal hanging over her, steadfastly refusing to disappear, she made sure that the shop kept running.

At the far end of the living room — cum — bedroom,

“Now don’t go making me out to be some kind of villain. Anyone can see that I’m the real victim here.”

The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive.

I was beginning to get sick and tired of this stubborn “maternal affection.”

in other words, I would once again have to live with this strange, frightening woman, the two of us in the same house. It was a prospect I found difficult to contemplate.