Читать онлайн «Searching for Caleb»
Автор Энн Тайлер
More praise for
SEARCHING FOR CALEB
“The Pecks are marvelous — literally marvelous, by turns heartbreaking and hilarious. . . . It is not possible for me to convey adequately the magic of this book. There is not a wrong word or a false emotion. . . . These people seem part of our own lives and the search for Caleb becomes as important to us as it does to them. ”
“It is about growing up, mating and breaking away. It is about living by prescription and living by instinct. It is about loving the past and yet defying it, and taking responsibility for terrible things while holding onto joyfulness. It is about rebellion and adjustment, the simultaneous lust to wander and to take root, to move and to stay. It’s about trying, up till the moment of death, to discover what it was we rebelled against, what it was we adjusted to, what we loved and what we lost. Anne Tyler has made something magical out of common life, fulfilling our belief that it can be magical. She is the best of magicians, a born artist. She has created an epic. . . . Wonderful . . .
Perfect. ”A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1975 by Anne Tyler Modarressi
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. , New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96698
eISBN: 978-0-307-78838-2
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
v3. 1
1
The fortune teller and her grandfather went to New York City on an Amtrak train, racketing along with their identical, peaky white faces set due north. The grandfather had left his hearing aid at home on the bureau. He wore a black suit, pearl-gray suspenders, and a very old-fashioned, expensive-looking pinstriped collarless shirt. No matter what happened he kept his deep-socketed eyes fixed upon the seat in front of him, he continued sliding a thumb over the news clipping he held in his hand. Either the train had turned his deafness absolute or else he had something very serious on his mind, it was hard to tell which. In any case, he would not answer the few things the fortune teller said to him.
Past his downy white head, outside the scummy window, factories and warehouses streamed along. Occasionally a leftover forest would coast into view and then out again — twisted bare trees, trunks ripped by lightning, logs covered with vines, tangled raspy bushes and beer cans, whisky bottles, rusted carburetors, sewing machines, and armchairs. Then some town or other would take over. Men wearing several layers of jackets struggled with crates and barrels on loading docks, their breaths trailing out of their mouths in white tatters. It was January, and cold enough to make the brick buildings appear to darken and condense.
