"At the main entrance two rail employees reside in the office. Old white fans speckled with dirt wobble and squeak in an attempt to stir the air in the ticket office sauna. In the far corner one of the guards snores loudly, his grease stained shirt pulled tight over his ample stomach. At the ticket window a female guard flicks through the weekend paper, her feminine features coarse from endless hours spent in the sun. Both appear at ease with the dirty cluttered office."

"I first encountered The Reader over Your Shoulder more than fifty years ago when it was lent to me, highly recommended, during my final year at high school. To me, having to endure its sedate approach to the writing of prose seemed initially no more than an unwarranted and tedious extra burden on my already overcrowded study timetable. A further browse through the book the next day, however, persuaded me otherwise."

"Instantly I was back in the golden rule days. I can see me: a schoolgirl, free from the confines of the classroom and its disciplines, outdoors with two of my teenage intimates, absorbed in a “literary” game all the rage then and doing the rounds of the playground. The name of the game, if it had one, I can’t recall. So what was it and how was it played? ."