what we last read for the book club

"...The view from her bedroom window is there to soothe her. Her house is the end one in the row, and then comes the grass and then the trees, maple, and willow and through a gap in the trees the harbour, with the sun just beginning to touch the water, from which, today, a vapoury mist of rising. So pink, so white, so softly blue, with a slice of moon and the gulls circling and dripping like flights of souls; and on the mist the city floats, tower and tower and tower and spire, the glass walls of different colours; black, silver, green, copper, catching the light and throwing it back, tenderly at this hour. From here on the Island, the city is mysterious, like a mirage, like the cover on a book of science fiction. A paperback. It's like this at sunset too, when the sky turns burnt orange and the crimson of inner space, and then indigo, and the lights in the many windows change the darkness to gauze; and then at night the neon shows up against the sky and it gives off a glow, like an amusement park or something safely on fire"...