conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Doctor, Impostor, Strange with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Small Circle of Beings'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Small Circle of Beings
  She keeps on walking. She does not acknowledge my presence at all, but continues to scan the shelves of goods, searching, she would have it appear, for something.
  At this she stops. Her trolley drifts on a little way, bumps into a row of tins. A tin falls, clattering. 'What do you want?' she says.
  Her voice is high, as though air escapes through a valve in her neck. She does wear the pearls I imagined: a loose, jiggling white chain at her throat. As she speaks, her face clenches up, then releases. Perhaps she is wrinkling her nose at me.
  David spends each weekend with his father. It is at these times, while I am left alone in the house, with only my mother for company, that I feel grief most acutely. There is nothing to keep me busy and I find myself pacing the floors and musing. When David returns, I question him.
  If this is true, I resent it. I require her curiosity, as I am curious about her. From what David can tell me, I try to piece together a picture of their lives: Stephen and this woman. David speaks of her, I hear, as Auntie Gloria; and in a strange way she does feel like my sister. She is someone, I feel, I knew well a long time ago.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Perhaps.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Small Circle of Beings
  She keeps on walking. She does not acknowledge my presence at all, but continues to scan the shelves of goods, searching, she would have it appear, for something. 
  At this she stops. Her trolley drifts on a little way, bumps into a row of tins. A tin falls, clattering. 'What do you want?' she says. 
  Her voice is high, as though air escapes through a valve in her neck. She does wear the pearls I imagined: a loose, jiggling white chain at her throat. As she speaks, her face clenches up, then releases. Perhaps she is wrinkling her nose at me. Perhaps I smell bad to her. 
  David spends each weekend with his father. It is at these times, while I am left alone in the house, with only my mother for company, that I feel grief most acutely. There is nothing to keep me busy and I find myself pacing the floors and musing. When David returns, I question him. 
  If this is true, I resent it. I require her curiosity, as I am curious about her. From what David can tell me, I try to piece together a picture of their lives: Stephen and this woman. David speaks of her, I hear, as Auntie Gloria; and in a strange way she does feel like my sister. She is someone, I feel, I knew well a long time ago.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: four more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The turnoff is here. I catch up with Robert and we turn off side by side, pedalling again to keep moving. Ahead of us the surface of the lake is between the trees, stretched out greenly in the dark. The trees thin out, there's a bare strip along the edge of the water.
  We stop here. The path we were riding on goes, straight and even, into the water. That's because it used to lead somewhere before they flooded the valley to make the lake. They say that under the water there are houses and gardens, standing empty and silent in the currents below. I think of them and shiver. It's always night down there at the bottom of the lake; the moon never shines.
  But we've stopped far from where the path disappears. We're still side by side, straddling the bikes, looking out. The dogs have also stopped, stock-still, as if they can smell something in the air. There's a faint wind coming in off the water, more of a breeze really. On the far side of the lake we can see the lights of houses. Far off to the right, at the furthest corner of the water, are the lights of my house. I glance towards it and try to imagine them: my father and mother, sitting out on the front veranda, looking across the water to us. But there are no lights where we are.
  He's pointing. I follow his finger and I also see it: the moon, clear of the trees on the other side. It really is huge tonight, as if it's been swollen with water. If you stare at it for long enough you can make out the craters on its surface, faint and blue, like shadows. Its light comes down softly like rain and I see I was wrong – it makes the water silver, not green.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last three paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He said nothing. He shifted against the pole and heard the fragile creeper tearing under his shoulder.
  They stood, not speaking. The bald moon was pasted to the sky, as round and white as a cigarette burn. Shell had read that there were footprints marked indelibly on its surface. But down here in the lonely garden, he could not imagine those distant tracks. Here the trees were roaring in an unfelt wind. The same high stars were burning.
  Shell left again two days before school started. The trip down to the station was a repetition of the last: the quiet car, headlights, dark. But he was absolutely without sadness as he took his leave. Fumbling with his suitcase, he kissed his mother on a charred cheek. He shook his father's hand with a perfunctory grip. He climbed aboard as the train began to clunk and crash in preparation. Looking out through the compartment window, he saw again this couple who had conspired to bring him about. He saw them for the first or last time. They stood, slung against each other as though they'd toppled that way, hands clasping, shoulders pressed, waiting for erosion to complete their collapse. As he watched, a small blizzard of leaves blew across them, so that they became fragmented and faded – as if already only remembered.