conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Nicola, Jonathan, Nicola's with the genre: Literature & Fiction, British & Irish?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Essence of the Thing'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a plot for a book about Nicola, Jonathan, Nicola's?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Essence of the Thing: The novel begins with the end of a relationship as the novel's protagonist Nicola Gatling, returning from a trip to the shops to get some cigarettes, is told by her lover Jonathan that he wants her to move out of their shared flat.\nThe story follows Nicola's attempts to remake her life over the ensuing several weeks in 1990s London.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Essence of the Thing
  Thirty-something Nicola Gatling works in publishing and is happily partnered—albeit with the odd moment of doubt—with Jonathan, a lawyer.
  They'd been walking out for slightly less than a year: it seemed to be going quite beautifully: except for that edge of anxiety or even of fear—'Can it last? Are we actually—shall we—do you really love me?'—never articulated but always there, like a drone note which was silenced only during the act of love itself.
  Jonathan is a perfect model of English male strength and financial stability, but he's also rather good at taking charge. St John herself was a sucker for a chap like him, and she is wickedly accurate as she almost mocks her heroine's predilections:
  The dark blue smell of English serge: nothing else like it. Then the smell of Jonathan. Nothing else...
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Nicola managed to laugh, and then tears started coming out of her eyes again. 'What would I do without you,' she said brokenly.
  Nicola imagined the scene, Jonathan lying in the street, as still as death, covered in blood, and began to weep again in earnest.
  And she began to wonder just how Jonathan might really have been living and thinking, and feeling, for the relationship to have come to this, and she thought it might be a good idea to do something about lunch, because then Nicola might be able to talk about everything which had happened, and she might gain some true perception of this extraordinary and terrible situation.
  So, she's gone, thought Jonathan, she has actually gone. It's all over; she's gone. And the flat itself seemed, from the moment that the front door had closed behind her, to have stopped breathing, to have been stilled into a silence so vacant that he was almost afraid to move, and still stood on the spot where he'd been standing, just inside the sitting-room doorway, when she'd made her exit, suitcase in hand.
  But he didn't go into the kitchen: instead he sat down for a moment on the sofa and looked at the fireplace, and wondered what was wrong, so terribly wrong; and then it came into focus again: it was the bare mantelpiece, of course. He remembered, now. She'd taken away all the dogs. Well, of course she had, they were her dogs. He hadn't even liked them all that much—he'd used to tease her about them at first; they weren't even good, most of them. 'Bad dogs,' he'd said. Except for the Derby pug he'd given her, that they'd seen one night, walking up Kensington Church Street together after seeing a film at the Odeon, looking in the windows of the antique shops on the way.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last three paragraphs? Start with the sentence 'He hesitated slightly before taking them from her'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He hesitated slightly before taking them from her. Then a thought seemed to strike him. 'By the way,' he said, 'do you like rubies?'
  She let in the clutch. She could hardly bear to look at his face, just at this moment: it harrowed her. Then she waved briefly and drove away.
  When she reached Chelsea, she did not cross the river immediately, but parked near the Embankment, and went and hung over the wall, staring for a long time down at the water while the traffic roared dreadfully past her back, and wondering why she could not—just now—feel anything other than an all-engulfing, and quite unutterable, sadness.