noontime

"Besides," he continued, "I don't owe Lynne the way I do you. You notice I don't lie and say I don't love her at all. She's meant a great deal to me. But you're different. Loving you is different ---"
"Because I'm black?"
"You make me feel healthy, purposeful---"
"Because I'm black?"
"Because you're you, damn it! The woman I should have married and didn't!"
"Should have loved, and didn't," she murmured.
And Truman sank back staring, as if at a lifeboat receding in the distance.

i have yet to find out what happens in the end to lynne and truman and meridian, but i can't bring myself to read through to the finish. maybe i don't want to finish the book because i don't want to start another (and i cannot not start on a new book after this one because i'm going to be soooooo bored just lazing around). or maybe i don't want to finish this book because i'll be feeling withdrawal pains, and would be looking for walker-induced hurts in the book that would follow.

to say that alice walker is one tough act to follow is an understatement (well, except of course if the next book is a novel by toni morrison, but this is the farthest i would go at digression). this is my third walker novel, and although i cannot say that i did not like the color purple and the temple of my familiar, i have to say that meridian is, by far, the best i've read. i am not doing the novel any justice though, by writing about it in general terms, so i'm going to have to stop rambling at this point, wait till i finish the book, and come back for an un-poseur like post. :D