““She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she liked to read. The university’s “British and American Literature Course Catalog” was, for Madeleine, what its Bergdorf equivalent was for her roommates. A course listing like “English 274: Lily’s Euphues” excited Madeleine the way a pair of Fiorucci cowboy boots did Abby. “English 450A: Hawthorne and James” filled Madeleine with an expectation of sinful hours in bed not unlike what Olivia got from wearing a Lycra skirt and leather blazer in Danceteria. Even as a girl in their house in Prettrybrook, Madeleine wandered into the library, with its shelves of books rising higher than she could reach … and the magisterial presence of all those potentially readable words stopped her in her tracks.””
