In the Skin of a Lion | Michael Ondaatje

[podsnappery]

Clara and Ambrose and Alice and Temelcoff and Cato - this cluster made up a drama without him. And he himself was nothing but a prism that refracted their lives. He searched out things, he collected things. He was an abashed man, an inheritance from his father. Born in Abashed, Ontario. What did the word mean? Something that suggested there was a terrible horizon in him beyond which he couldn't leap. Something hollow, so when alone, when not aligned with another - whether it was Ambrose or Clara or Alice - he could hear the rattle within that suggested a space between him and community. A gap of love.

pp. 157