but are there books?

I love this cover!

“Her new novel is called ‘The Beginner’s Goodbye,’ and its opening line appeared to her as if from the spirit world: ‘The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted.’ The narrator is named Aaron and his wife, Dorothy, was killed suddenly when a tree crashed through their roof. Forced to move in with his overbearing sister, Nandina, he looks back on his marriage and remembers its bonds and strains and wonders ‘whether we find out what our lives have amounted to.’ “

“No, it’s American,” Maryam said. “I can’t explain why, but it is. Americans are all larger than life. You think that if you keep company with them you will be larger too, but then you see that they’re making you shrink; they’re expanding and edging you out.”