Where Books and Readers Come Together
“It’s not even accurate to call it the past, for the events related in these pages didn’t occur in the past. The details that have been preserved are already abundant. Sealed in floating bottles, they will hopefully reach the new universe and endure there.”
“And he remembered as one remembers a dream long past how O-lan rested from her work a little while and fed the child richly and the white rich milk ran out of her breast and spilled upon the ground. And this seemed too long past ever to have been.”
“But lately, don’t ask why, I’ve no taste for comedy, no inclination to exercise, even if I had the space, no delight in fire or earth, in words that once revealed a golden world of majestical stars, the beauty of poetic apprehension, the infinite joy of reason.”
“When I got to the sixth veil, I went over to the Shiva statue, simulated an orgasm, and cast myself to the ground while removing the seventh and final veil.”
“The big question in my mind is not if your mom is coming back. It’s if Pete is, and if I’ll get a chance at having someone like you.”
“Suppose a vast number of civilizations are distributed throughout the universe, on the order of the number of detectable stars. Lots and lots of them. Those civilizations make up the body of a cosmic society. Cosmic sociology is the study of the nature of this super-society” (p 12).
O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato is a masterful work of art that incorporates a powerful story brought to life and vivid characters that stand out and above the norm.
From there, the reader follows Mercier as he sways a German named Halbach to spy against his country. By book’s end, Mercier is able to smuggle top secret documents out of Germany but is promoted as punishment and ordered out of the country.
