The second book I read was by Anna Quindlen, who wrote One True Thing, which I want to watch because Lauren Graham's in it, with Reneé Zellweger. (Boy, LG seems to be following me everywhere!)

The book started out slow, with description after description after description. I almost quit reading halfway into the second chapter because the plot seemed to be hidden under the many adjectives... until I realised that it was one of those "the world used to be slow, but the world is changing now" kind of novels. The book was writing with the pace and the linguistics of the older days (almost Victorian), and its characters lived that Victorian life - until life catches up with them, as it always inevitably does.

Plot... ah yes. Skip, an accidental ex-con, works as a land-keeper/gardener for Miz Blessing, at her large house, with a lake and acres of land. He wakes up one morning and finds a baby in her garage which he sleeps over. He decides to keep it. She (cranky, grumpy, bitter old lady) decides to help him, for reasons which unfold over the course of the book. Comic situations and a lot of soft-focus love (for the baby) goes on, until one day, the mom (and her mom and dad) come claim the baby. Baby goes back, Miz Blessing dies, Skip gets some money with her will, and... that's pretty much it. But the telling of the story - ah, therein lies the magic. Slow, almost to the point of screaming, but in the end, it's worth the effort put in. The soft-focus effect never goes away, even when the Victorian is pushed into the Modern - but the change is a creeping shift in boundaries on both sides - the Modern slowly inching its way into the Victorian, and the Victorian slowly retreating away into itself, until it passes away, with the old lady.

I have exams in a week. God help me.