Wednesdays with Words (So Brave, Young, and Handsome)

 

I have recently quite a few reviews for So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger. I was looking for another audio book to listen to and since it was immediately available from Library2Go I downloaded it. Leif Enger writing is mesmerizing and I think listening to it has even made it stand out even more. Here are a few passages that I have enjoyed.
 

Glendon began taking supper with us once or twice a week. He kept an orderly greenplot and never arrived minus chard or kale or chives in wet burlap. At first he was quiet and somewhat formal visitor, yet the whole house lightened with him there. I admired his plain language and courtesy and the way he found everything interesting but himself. Redstart of course was polite as a pry bar.

I think often of Celia Davies. She could squeeze a conversation to its rind, leap it east to west, or change its axis wholly. Her wits were as supple as her fingers were rigid. I don't know her story, for she was an adept evader of questions, but her life would be a giddy crossword, working down from some clues and across from others.

Meantime Charles Siringo lay against the shire's neck like wet bedding. There was some debate among the boardinghouse audience whether he was alive or dead on that horse, but I hadn't any doubt of his living. Laugh all you like at the old perception of the fated existence; Siringo wore it like his own skin. You can't kill history. You can't shoot it with a bullet and watch it recede into whatever lies outside of memory. History is tougher than that--if it's going to die, it has to die on its own.