conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled The Glass Character about Globe, Mail, Vancouver with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author's experience in print journalism includes hundreds of columns and book reviews in such publications as the Globe & Mail, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist and Montreal Gazette. Her poems have appeared in Prism International, Room of One's Own, Capilano Review and many others. Margaret's first novel (Better than Life), described by the Edmonton Journal as "fiction at its finest", celebrates the joy and anguish of family in small-town Ontario. Her second novel (Mallory) explo
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first two paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Glass Character
  HOW I HATE THEM, HATE THEM more than life itself! Every few years, one of the studios cranks one of them out, a compilation of the "funniest moments from the silent screen": bleeding chunks torn from movies that were once hilarious and enchanting, now clanging with absurd sound effects, tinny piano music, jerky projection and a booming, insensitive narrator. This sort of manhandling destroys all the charm and superb comic timing that made these films such a pleasure to watch.
  Then came a few snippets of one of the greatest entertainers of all time, falling down and spinning around on his back and jumping back up, morosely facing the audience while the entire front of a building falls down on him from behind (with a perfectly-placed window saving him from being pounded into the ground), and launching a boat that immediately and gracefully sinks.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was a stinging slap, but one I thought I deserved. And yet... how many of the girls at Miss Pettigrew's school were underage? More to the point: did anyone care?
  The call left me utterly flat with exhaustion, and I called in sick the next day and lay in bed as if paralyzed. I wondered if the police had already questioned the other waitresses, the girls I had come to think of as my friends. Or, worse, Shirley, whom I hoped did not know about this (while suspecting that with her elaborate web of connections, she probably did).
  Desperate, not wanting him to know but unable to go on in this state of abject loneliness, I called the one completely unshakeable friend I had, the only one I knew I could trust with my life.
  I huddled in his arms for hours that night, trembling and babbling through uncontrollable tears. "I'm going to go to jail for the rest of my life. I'll take the fall for everyone involved in this. I knew she was young and innocent and a little bit slow. She knew nothing about men, nothing about life at all. And I did nothing to protect her."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: There is nothing quite like the sensation of being on the outside of a fancy restaurant looking in, especially when it's winter. It's a kind of paradise denied. I looked through the window and saw that the restaurant was quite full, with thick smoke hanging in the air. I looked and looked, didn't see him, and felt foolish and humiliated. I wondered if he'd toy with me like that after all these years.
  Then I saw someone wave. He didn't look his age: not any age, or perhaps he was every age. Decades fell away. A silly smile insisted on having its way with my face.
  Because this is a work of fiction, I sometimes found it necessary to improvise on history. Though I did extensive research in exploring the era in general and Lloyd's life in particular, this story is not intended to be biographical. In some cases, dates have been gently moved, details tweaked, the players rearranged and certain things invented in the service of story. Even with these changes, my hope is that the spirit of this unique and remarkable screen artist comes through — the Harold Lloyd I fell in love with.