P is for Pocket Wife

Welcome to today’s post for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. For each day, I’ll be sharing the opening paragraphs to a book that starts with that letter and is sitting on my shelves or my Kindle.

The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford

The ambulance is still miles away when Dana awakens to the near dark of evening, It wails ribbon-thin in the smog over the highway as she opens her eyes where she lies sprawled across her couch in a suburb of Paterson, a stone's throw from Manhattan but a different world entirely. She wakes to a headache throbbing at the backs of her lids, a library book lying beside her. She sits up and reaches for the book, marking her place with a tiny corner fold, giving it a little pat as she sets it on the coffee table.

Lately she can read a novel in two hours. She has always been an avid reader, but these days she can read much faster. The colors, the conversations, everything is much more vibrant and inclusive, as if opening a book releases genies trapped inside. The scenes and people between their covers sometimes seem more vivid than real life, with their sunny, pearl-toothed characters, the witty conversation, the handsome stranger squeezed into a subway car or knocking about on the street. Sometimes, when she finished a book at record speed, Dana feels a slight letdown, as if a good friend has hung up the phone in the middle of a conversation.

So, what do you think? Read it soon or give it away?