Here Kitty Kitty by Jardine Libaire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a heartbreakingly lovely writer Libaire is. She captures both the joyful magic and excruciating pain of youth, through the eyes of Lee, as human a narrator as I've ever read.

Toward the end of the book, Lee watches a group of boys cross a lot outside her building in Brooklyn. In this gorgeous collection of sentences, Libaire speaks directly to the heart (or mine, at least) about what it is to have once been young:

"And I want to go, to be part of it. Absurd as this is, I yearn after the place where they vanished. But in this life we take turns at being enchanting, then enchanted. First we play in the streets, unaware of the freedom burning in the sun on our hair and the cigarette in our mouth, unconscious of the daydreams we inspire. Then it's our time to sit at a window and watch, and we are moved."

I nodded as I read these words, a hand on my heart. "Yes," I said aloud. "Yes."


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