There was something compelling in the style of writing. Fatigue rose around him like a great protective blanket. He dozed, as was his wont, reawakening, and reading more, pausing to think about the details and complexities of the book, comparing it to aspects of his own family’s life. Entirely another world, and yet connected. The galleon in the middle of the rain forest: Will, forever on his questing, Quixotic journeys. The woman who was too beautiful to be placed in a grave in the earth, who was magically taken up to heaven wrapped in the bed linen she was hanging out to dry. Intangibly like his mother. The fable-like quality of the subject matter was made real by the narrative style. Alex was sure Will would have read this book, and loved it; he had seen it among the piles of his life that cluttered his own London flat now. His brother had not an investment to his name, but endless shelves of intellectual property, music—on disk and sheet music—books to the ceiling, first-edition Penguins that Siân had threatened him about so often, perhaps one time too many. Not at all a good idea to ask him to choose between “me or those awful, grubby books”—she had given up on tying them into beribboned piles on the shelves to offset their drab appearance. Alex knew better than she which way the choice might go, although now he could sympathize with Siân, given the sprawl they caused. He looked forward to talking to Will about this book, though—wished he could do so now: he knew that the raw emotion and fantasy would have attracted Will. But a fresh realization was born. Although Alex and his brother were two sides of the same coin—Father’s elder son, and Mother’s younger boy—Alex knew there was a deeper level in his own being that he had not truly explored, just as there was a serious side to Will that he did not like to expose. He lamented the tendency well-meaning parents and friends have to typecast their progeny. “Alex is so steady, hardworking, a real logician. He’ll make a wonderful doctor. An impossible act for his brother to follow. Will? He’s just a dreamer, can’t spell a word, head always in a book. Plays the piano like Chopin. But God knows what he’ll ever achieve—he never settles to anything.” Will had traditionally laughed off this kind of comment, saying he’d “rather have been George Sand.” But it must have hurt inside, just as it rankled with Alex that he came off—according to this binary opposition—as ever dependable and by correlation a little unexciting. Their mother knew better and fought familial opinion. “They are intelligent, inspirational men, both of them. Let’s wait and see how they use their hours on this earth.”