IT wasn’t just that Marianne always had her head buried in a book, Clive grumbled, but that she continued to bring them home when the place was overflowing with the bloody things. Their (her) bookshelves were packed like Tetris bricks, and stalagmites of paperbacks grew on tables, chairs, floorboards. Marianne’s bedside table—home to her considerable ‘To Be Read’ pile—scarcely had room for a tea mug. Yet still Marianne wanted more, dreamily turning over bookshops, libraries, op shops and garage sales for typeset touchstones and life preservers; little universes in which she could lose (and maybe even find) herself.