Pure

Sometimes when you're reading a book, even liking it, but not quite personally connected to it, you find a passage that just rings so clear and true that it startles like a recognition.

Certainly she is no dreaming girl, no innocent. She knows about men, knows a great deal of the world's character. But it is hard , whatever you have endured, to give up on love. Hard to stop thinking of it as a home you might one day find again. More than hard. 

She licks a finger, turns the page. 

The title is Pure, by Andrew Miller and the place setting is Paris, 1785, just prior to the revolution. The plot is macabre and the book is already being compared to Patrick Suskind's Perfume. I've only just begun it, but it seems the perfectly appropriate title for this sad gray day.