From the writer of the preface to our book of the year i

 imagine a literature

 of power without force

He made her loneliness and her

isolation into a longing to meet

someone, for a face at the window,

a figure in the distance.

                 This longing, he knew, would in

                 time come to him, too, as the

                 garden door creaked, or the 

                 branches of the trees beat against

                 the window as he read by lamplight,

                 or lay awake in that old house, and

                 in one of those seconds before worth-

                 ier thoughts could surface, the first

                 thought would be to welcome what was

                 coming now ..

The person looking in through the window was the person who had appeared to her. He was the same. His face was close to the glass and his stare into her face was deep and menacing until she realized something that she would never cease to believe: the added shock of certitude went through her fiercely that it was not for her he had come. He had come for the children.

Colm Tóibín

The Master

  Chapter Six

Scribner, 2004©