Heft: A Novel by Liz Moore


Kel --


One girl in my high school, her family belongs, and even though we are not friends I know it about her. It’s the thing that is always said next after her name.     990  {to the fancy country club}

Who I was meant something different here than it did at home. At home I was in charge of all the boys at my school. I am not exaggerating, it was true. I was in charge of them as surely as if I had been elected. I told them things to do and they did them.     1020

My classmates spoke perfect drawling lazy English. They spoke like rich adults. I think, said one, that what Reagan was forgetting was that people *give a damn* about other people. It was astonishing.     1042
 


I can throw and catch balls. I can run faster than most people. I can swing bats and launch my body like a missile toward the bodies of other players and I can knock them down. I can jump. I can tense my muscles and swallow the blows that come in my direction from elbows and shoulders and hips.     1071


We had to petition the town again to let me stay at PLHS because my mom didn’t work at the school anymore. Coach Ramirez took me with him to a school board meeting and told them, Here is a straight-A student with a very sick mom, and I dressed up in khakis and tucked my stupid shirt in. And I am a straight-C student if I am anything.     1117

    
A mattress in the backyard. A mattress with a red bull’s-eye on it.     4041

Marcus can throw the ball too—better than I can, maybe. It stings to catch a ball that this kid throws in from the outfield. I can feel it for seconds afterward.     4041

Marcus tosses the ball up in the air and catches it. How many hours have I spent in my life doing that. Just doing that with any type of ball I could find. Baseballs and basketballs and footballs. Rocks when there were none. Marbles. Pennies. Flipping quarters. Throwing books in the air and catching them. Just tossing things.  I think it is what I have done most in my life. Lying down on my bed or standing up or out in the little backyard.     4080

My mother drew the bull’s-eye. She propped the mattress up and drew the red bull’s-eye on it for me. My mother, wearing sweatpants and a robe, her feet bare in our grassless backyard, and there I was behind her, tossing a baseball into the air.  And catching it. Oh I caught it.  Oh I always did.     4115

    
I think about the Marcus Hobarts of the world, the people who play like they are magic, the people who play like they were made for baseball and baseball was made for them. Sometimes I think that I am like this too, like I am part of this, but there are days, more and more, when I’m not sure. And I think you have to be sure. I think the Marcus Hobarts of the world are positive.     4335


Kel, says Dr. Moscot, and I say, Wait.   Kel, says Dr. Moscot.   Hang on a second, I say.
I’m very sorry to tell you this, says Dr. Moscot. This is what it feels like, I keep thinking. For so many years I’ve been wondering.     2582

She’s dead, I say again, and it’s the third time I’ve said it and the first time I’ve meant it: that she’s gone, my mother is gone, I cannot ask her anything or tell her anything ever again.     3285



Why is he staying here? Mrs. Harper pauses. He lost his mama, she says finally.  His mama? says Margo. Yes, says Mrs. Harper. The way we lost Andy. He lost his mama. Oh no, says Margo.     4172

She’s the best girl I’ve ever known.     1173 {Lindsay Harper}
 
I have stopped lying or being very silent. I have been telling everyone the truth. I have been letting them help me. They all want to help me and so I am letting them. Lindsay told me that when someone in your family dies you have to let people think they are helping. It is kind to. It helps them, she told me. It helps them to think they are helping. So I’ve been trying. For Lindsay.     3870

Yes. I keep letting people help me. I feel like I am opening, but also like I am dying.     3883

Heft : a novel -by Liz Moore 

also I noticed, I liked 

that Arthur’s first person narration uses ampersands for and:   "I opened the front door &  put the letter in the mailbox & tipped up the happy little red flag."  

and Arthur says  “O”  (not “Oh” like other characters including Kel)  

Charlene calling & saying she had thought of him   ~   “O just like that”   

Arthur says how Yolanda says “Oh no” when listening to story & hears something she does not like.  

does he report it as Oh no   or  O no   when she says it  ?   not sure.    he says “O no”   I think, to her, echoing her,  maybe about her parents cutting her off  ~   

and Kel hears Lindsay’s little sister Margo asking her mother why he is staying there. and she says ~ Because.. he lost his Mama.  like we lost Andy.  (their son/brother).  and Margo says His Mama? Oh no.  

Oh no.

Heft: A Novel by Liz Moore

She loves to watch reruns of the late-night comedy program Mad TV & she often describes or reenacts sketches from that show with great vigor, laughing at her own recollection of it, ending each retelling with, It was so funny.   759

“And is he a good person?” I asked. She rolled her eyes. The girl does not hold back what she is feeling, you see.   864

I will tell her Mom, Mom.   907

I cry immediately. There’s no deciding not to.   918

When I was a baby she held me and kept me alive. This I tell myself at times to stop me from hitting her squarely in the jaw.   929

She has bad skin and what looks like a rash on her face. Almost always she has this.   936 ...   

All of my life she’s worn terrible clothes that no one has worn since the 80s and she has never let herself be helped in this department, believe me I have tried. And she has two tattoos on her, a honeybee on her arm and a fucking electric guitar, an electric guitar with a long and snakelike cord that goes down her back and comes over her shoulder. She wears a bathing suit—she used to wear a bathing suit—without a back to show it off. She loves her tattoos. She’s proud of them.   938

It is just as I had imagined it, green and goodsmelling: a dark wooden desk against one wall   3485  ...  Yesterday’s shirt hanging over one post of her canopied bed.    The heat in this house makes a low comforting hum, a rush of air.   3486

It is in how she moves & in her general greenness, her dearness.   3602

All the girls he tells me about were four years younger and full of ideas when I knew them. Denise Torres wore a bright green jacket every day in the winter and her laugh started with a K.   3935

I have been trying to imagine what my mother was like when she was young. She would have been small. She would have been quiet unless she was nervous. If she was nervous she would have talked too much. 3937    ...

She would have had crushes on teachers and senior boys who did not know her. All the girls I know from Yonkers, all the girls who will never leave, she was like them.  3941

aggrieved & unbeautiful   3999

And so I began to hope. I did not hesitate to.   4008

Note: p83 Kel: I cry immediately. There is no deciding not to.   (location 918, above)

I tried to picture him and couldn’t, so I pictured someone backlit by the sun.   4320

I wish I could be obscured by something when he first sees me, hiding behind a plant or a sofa. I wish I could be shadowed by something larger than I am.   4398

kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights

this has the highlights I made yesterday ... up until last night or was it this morning when I turned wireless off by turning airplane mode on
Last annotated on March 24, 2013 

= today Sunday so I guess I turned off wireless (airplane mode) today - late last night, or after noon today)

highlighted more today, but maybe these earlier ones most important to me?  incl fr search for 'green' (bcs lkg to see who was Dr. Greene, he was Charlene's boss, a vice principal at Pell HS, she was his secretary for 5 1/2 yrs)

added two more notes~ as cross references ~ noting call-backs to prvs passages: 

*tipped up the little red flag  

---nearly the same sentence when Arthur puts out his confessional letter to Charlene ~ 'I opened the front door & put the letter in the mailbox & tipped up the little red flag.'  (the happy little red flag? yes) and near end when sends reply to Kel's note  '...& put it in the mailbox & tipped up the little red flag.'  

 and  

*the purple down coat to her ankles ~ p28  then ~p280 fabric of purple down coat stuck in its own zipper. I helped her.  hands on her hands    fabric without tearing     then p320ish re never intimate, that was the closest.  would have liked to help her with her coat ~forever 




The first time we met for coffee, the fabric of her purple down coat got stuck in the teeth of its own zipper. I helped her.  I moved her hands away from it with my own & I pulled the fabric loose without a tear. Thank you she said.     4012

We were never intimate. Occasionally we held hands. Occasionally she took my arm. Occasionally. Nothing more. The closest to Charlene I ever felt was the very first time we met outside of school—the one time I helped her with her coat.   If I could have helped her with her coat for hours, for the rest of her life, I would have.     4260

Note: ~p28 wearing a purple down coat that came to her ankles 
~p320 The first time we met for coffee, the fabric of her purple down coat got caught in its own zipper. I helped her. I moved her hands away from it with my own and I pulled the fabric loose without a tear. 

Genesis: Bernard Beckett: 9780547225494: Amazon.com: Books


aaaaaah.  had been trying to identify this book.  which I read a galley of but did not keep bcs did not like much  but thinking of how if do not keep how can you recall?   this one what I remember esp not leading to finding it.  ~ one word title ~ grand  ~ like Revolution  but not that  maybe starts with R   (turns out in bk there is history of a Republic) or with E       there is red hair like blowing in wind on cover    red hair was of tutor  gentle loved by a student presenting a history of her country or society for an exam  to join an academy?  her name maybe starts with A  and there is an Adam in the history  and it is to do with computers, and apes? monkeys?  some reveal at the end that they the examiners and the student and her tutor are all ____  apes I suppose where the reader has assumed they are people ?  and computers figure, are they part computer?  part computer part ape?  

searching book academy redhead monkey/ape

and tried putting in science fiction recent novel  young adult

(thought I recalled some noticing / qstning whether it was for young adults)

was NOT getting it


did happen on this:
How to Find That Book You've Spent Years Looking For -utne.com/2003-11-01
which is cool, it's 2003, it's just this quite general article
the advice is try ABE and also you could ask a librarian!
 but then there's this looooong list of comments forever and ever still going in 2011bttm of page is 2008  this is eight years of people coming to this page because of the article title?
asking Can you tell which book I mean?
Everyone's got their one book...
the book YOU have spent YEARS looking for
 it had a this and then there was this, and I think the cover ...
//Oh, humanity.   what we remember.  in all we forget, what we remember.  these read like dreams.//
 'I am looking for a book any suggestions on finding it. Its
called hunted or hunter by an author with the first or last name
david. The main characters name is david. The cover is black with
red tear across the middle of three claws. its sci fi and deals
with a mad scientist who takes dna alterning serum that turns him
into a beast.'
' it was about two brothers who were mirror twins (I think the medical term is that they have situs invertus). Anyway there was something about the balance of the universe and one twin was supposed to die but then the wrong twin dies. the story then splits up and we follow the living twin as he tries to deal with the now apocolyptic world and the dead twin as he journeys through the afterlife. Its a very vague description but the only other thing i remember is that the living twin (i feel like his name was felix but that could be wrong?) gets stabbed but he lives because his heart was on the other side of his body. Can anyone help? I would really appreciate it!'
// really it is sweet.  plenty of people helping each other  Martha I think the book you mean is...
and it's sweet that stories get to so many people, get in mind,  "and he turned out to be a scottish laird's son"//


and so mark this to read through these.  
what I know about Revonotlution I dunno about redheaded girl ape student Adam book is less coherent than many of these,

going to have to find my own note of it (if I made one) or bust.

not sure I would have noted it at all since not that into it but maybe before releasing the physical book to the non-recollected  

on phone had looked thru dlww/books

then tonight after dealing in marks & notes tonight
because into novel Heft - web - kindle az highlights  > dlww
so mind flurry orginfo

tried again and then gave try to
dlcs/books  search ape nope.   then searched galley sort of a whim but that is one fact I recall it was to-me a galley scrolled to bttm of screen to see how many pgmrks dealing with, will dlcs infinite scroll just keep loading, is this too much to look through   at least now  not up for a long loook
and As Luck Would Have It    the final pgmrk on the screen before the infinite scroll kicked in loaded more was  --
and I saw the one word title and re young adult and YEAY That Is It --

az Genesis: Bernard Beckett: Books

4 years ago amazon.com

z0903, books, a-before

int: bside the Houghton Mifflin edtn due April, also this hardcvr w almost-same cover (but eery bluer blue sky & sea, and author's name wher 'a novel' is on Houghton) fr Quercus Publishing Plc (May 7, 2009) AND at az.uk 1847247296 a hardcover w green jungle cover fr Quercus Publishing Plc; Children's ed edition (May 7, 2009). so I guess Quercus has the uk pub rights, and is doing a childrens as well as an adult edtn (& for latter, shared design w Amer Houghton edtn) // unavail paperback edtn listed w no cover pic is Longacre Press 2006 so that's the New Zealand orig publ - y: longacre.co.nz and swhre out thr shld be th ~2008 Australian edtn fr Text Pub Co. // so, lkg at az struck by 1) # editions and 2) 'childrens' - 'young adult'. no sign of that on backcvr my galley, w marketing plan. seems B Beckett is a 'young adult' writer so this book has been marketed as that and also for adults.

az- Genesis: Bernard Beckett: Books | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 20, 2009) | Until one man rescues a girl fr the sea...

4 years ago amazon.com

z0903, books, a-before

glad my HMH galley has less as backcopy: 2075 remote island Republic has emerged fr apocalyptic plague-ridden past. isolatn fr outside world. approaching planes gunned down, refugees shot on sight. until one man rescues a girl fr the sea. outstndg & orig, stunning close. page-turner + provoctv novel ideas //glad d n even mention the format, the present day action of Anax taking examination. so I tht the girl fr the sea wld be import /plus cover, red hair - oh I see. Pericles.nice. & then I did guess no, not re her at all, Adam's import is w Art, they (Anax et al) are all ___. but wld hv guessed sooner & w less int if backcopy like here. / no rvws here yet; wh I find on goodreads etc via ggl d n cmmnt on two ~editing? problms: exam said to be 4 hours, but also 5: '1 down, 4 to go'. and, more bothering me, Adam goes to door on left & surprisd to find not to outside. but recited plan = door on right to outside, then come back to door on left wh is as he finds a small storeroom.