He must know he's not.' She looked all serious and strange, but I just thought it was Mum being Mum – she loved to make things up and cause trouble".
(Glance at a subway map to understand how serious, and strange, the competition was. See how the IND's 8th Avenue line snakes around the IRT's Seventh Avenue line? How the B and the D run right alongside the No. 4 in the Bronx?) These days, more than 60 years after the IND won and the three systems unified, the distinctions between them have almost faded away.
These come in "Garden," which is at once more serious (as in strange and ambitious) and less serious (as in witty and whimsical) than "Lean-To".
Focusing on that strange, serious time — let's call it senior year of high school — when everything seems at stake, she effectively captures the awkwardness and yearning of teenagers, their smarts and humor, verbal tics and tribal rites.
Mr. Tolle's memorial is strong, serious and atmospheric, but strange.
The idea that art theft is not quite a serious crime has a strange hold in some quarters.
Here, from the serious to the downright strange, is a cheat-sheet of all of those commitments in full: Real estate mogul Donald Trump Build a wall.
When, a few weeks later, its scientists noticed a similar cluster of a rare cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma in San Francisco, they suspected that something strange and serious was afoot.
To conclude: It Can't Happen Here is a strange, strange novel, with a serious, serious message: Beware the leader in rough times promising a New Day via violence.
