conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled The Meeting Point about Belfast, English, Queens with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author was born in Belfast in 1981. She read English at Queens' College, Cambridge, and is a graduate of Goldsmith's MA in Creative and Life Writing. Her debut novel Where They Were Missed (2006), was described in the Independent as 'beautifully paced, evocative and unfaltering... an object lesson in balancing the personal and the political'. An award-winning playwright, she is currently under commission to write for the main stage of the Royal Court Theatre.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book titled The Meeting Point.. Start with the sentence 'The Meeting Point: An archaeological team, digging in a remote village and led by an old professor, unearths an old Roman artifact, a gravestone bearing some mysterious inscriptions'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Meeting Point: An archaeological team, digging in a remote village and led by an old professor, unearths an old Roman artifact, a gravestone bearing some mysterious inscriptions.\nAfter realizing that they have stumbled upon something precious, the professor collapses with a heart attack.\nSeemingly dead for people around him, he finds himself in a sort of afterlife state and realizes that the stone marked a passage into the classical underworld so he starts mingling with the antique spirits of the dead.\nThe spirits themselves appear just as silly and petty as the peasants from the village above them, and in their desire to see what happened to their descendants, they find themselves surprised by the modern world of the living.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Meeting Point
  There were two children in the household: Serene and Ruthie, healthy and red, the only persons who had three square meals a day. Bernice made herself four: tea, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
  But time passed, and Mrs. Burrmann got used to Bernice, and to her singing in the kitchen. And Mrs. Burrmann overcame her earlier reservations about having Bernice's black hands touch her white bed linen and her silver cutlery. She grew accustomed to Bernice; and permitted her to graduate from merely preparing meals to serving them at table. But Bernice very often wondered why Mrs. Burrmann wanted a servant: she was such a diligent housewife — and this in spite of the novels and the whiskey. The way she could plan the household expenses for a month; sometimes cook a four-course meal and attend to the children, and still find time to have a nap in the afternoon, convinced Bernice that Mrs. Burrmann was a better domestic than she. Bernice did find out, later, why she was ever engaged: it was during a husband-and-wife bout of secrecy and whispering, when the word "treatment" was dropped. Apparently, Mrs. Burrmann was taking "treatment" for something; and Bernice began to notice her leaving the house, every Wednesday afternoon at a quarter to two, punctually as a bill collector.
  She began to handle Mrs. Burrmann's Royal Doulton chinaware, with its golden wheat sheaf stamped in the middle, as if it belonged to her. With her own two black hands, she would tuck the lily-white linen bibs under the chins of Serene and Ruthie, who were seven and five respectively. She began to move like a conqueror round the table, and about the house.
  Mrs. Burrmann's behaviour at some of these parties, and in the home generally, greatly distressed Bernice; and in time she too began to resent her mistress. She could not understand what kind of a wife would hold a party when her husband was absent: perhaps on a business trip in Hamilton; or in his office or his study, studying and pretending to be sick from the recurrent headaches which Bernice felt were the frustrations of his marriage. For Bernice, failure in marriage meant failure in bed. Early in her employment in this wealthy household, she began to feel the tension, and see the first signs of a division; and so, on more than one occasion, she had to shake her head, while standing amidst the rising evening fog of steam from the boiling pots, and say with some sympathy in her heart, "Mrs. Burrmann, God, you giving that man a dog's life!"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Meeting Point
  There were two children in the household: Serene and Ruthie, healthy and red, the only persons who had three square meals a day. Bernice made herself four: tea, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
  But time passed, and Mrs. Burrmann got used to Bernice, and to her singing in the kitchen. And Mrs. Burrmann overcame her earlier reservations about having Bernice's black hands touch her white bed linen and her silver cutlery. She grew accustomed to Bernice; and permitted her to graduate from merely preparing meals to serving them at table. But Bernice very often wondered why Mrs. Burrmann wanted a servant: she was such a diligent housewife — and this in spite of the novels and the whiskey. The way she could plan the household expenses for a month; sometimes cook a four-course meal and attend to the children, and still find time to have a nap in the afternoon, convinced Bernice that Mrs. Burrmann was a better domestic than she. Bernice did find out, later, why she was ever engaged: it was during a husband-and-wife bout of secrecy and whispering, when the word "treatment" was dropped. Apparently, Mrs. Burrmann was taking "treatment" for something; and Bernice began to notice her leaving the house, every Wednesday afternoon at a quarter to two, punctually as a bill collector.
  She began to handle Mrs. Burrmann's Royal Doulton chinaware, with its golden wheat sheaf stamped in the middle, as if it belonged to her. With her own two black hands, she would tuck the lily-white linen bibs under the chins of Serene and Ruthie, who were seven and five respectively. She began to move like a conqueror round the table, and about the house.
  Mrs. Burrmann's behaviour at some of these parties, and in the home generally, greatly distressed Bernice; and in time she too began to resent her mistress. She could not understand what kind of a wife would hold a party when her husband was absent: perhaps on a business trip in Hamilton; or in his office or his study, studying and pretending to be sick from the recurrent headaches which Bernice felt were the frustrations of his marriage. For Bernice, failure in marriage meant failure in bed. Early in her employment in this wealthy household, she began to feel the tension, and see the first signs of a division; and so, on more than one occasion, she had to shake her head, while standing amidst the rising evening fog of steam from the boiling pots, and say with some sympathy in her heart, "Mrs.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But on this afternoon of crisis, she forgot about the snow on the sidewalk. "Ice, man, go to hell, do! I in a damn hurry!" and she rushed over it like Frank Mahovlich in the Maple Leaf Hockey Stadium. When she arrived at the imposing house, accident-free and puffing, and knocked at the front door, the voice within said, "Come in, come in." Bernice cleaned her boots on three mats placed in the passageway, and entered the sitting-room that smelled like heather and retirement. She could smell chocolate cake. She saw the strange watercolours on the brown panelled walls; but she could not see the woman. When she took off her ear-muffs and her coat and her scarf and her McGregor tartan which was wrapped around her face, she must have only then come within range of the woman's weak eyes. There was a great intake of breath. Perhaps, the woman had difficulty breathing. "Come in, come in," but there was a different feeling in the welcome. "So you are a Christian? I'm so glad you are a Christian person, dear. It is such a decent thing for you." Bernice opened her mouth to ask about the rent, but the woman was still chattering. "I suppose you saw my watercolours on the way in... milk and sugar?.. retirement, you know, is a good thing, you know?.. providing you can provide for yourself. Piece of cake? You must try some of this dee-licious cake.... Now, take my case...." And she went on to tell Bernice that her husband was a professor in Classics and Philosophy at a university somewhere in Africa (she called the name but Bernice wasn't listening) and that he died last year of some disease (again Bernice heard the sound of the word, but not the word), and her voice went on like a leaking tap.
  The woman settled herself on her cushions, adjusted her pince-nez, and said, "You are coloured, aren't you, dear? Before you leave..."
  Brigitte came out just as she reached home; and Bernice made her walk back with her to the house she had just left. "Read that sign for me, Brigitte. What that sign saying?" Brigitte read the sign in the front window: "Room, for, rent." And still, not knowing what it was all about, she looked at Bernice and asked, "You leaving Mrs. Burrmann?"
  Going back home, Bernice was pensive. Brigitte was grumbling about the amount of work Mrs. Gasstein was giving her. She said they had just quarrelled because she had her boyfriend in her quarters. "I tell you, Bernice darlink. Working for these Jews is terrible. I was a Nazi. I am German. I confess to you, Bernice darlink, that as German, I know what Nazis had in their heart about these people."
  When she told it to Dots, all the details, all the strange conversation, the tea, the magazines and the cake, Dots was still shaking her head in bewilderment. "I still can't find no loop-holes in that, gal. I can't find nothing to say, 'gainst that old woman. But then again, gal, you and she is two Christians together, heh-heh-heh! She give you religion and a lot o' religion-talk. But be-Christ, when it come to a room for you to live in, she didn't have nothing to say 'bout that. Figure it out for yourself, gal."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last two paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: And a white porter came to Bernice, and rescued her; and took her down, by elevator. He showed her the waiting-room near the Operating Room. There was a man waiting there, too. Bernice waited (the man was standing with his back to her) and then a doctor came out, and she stood up, wondering whether this was Estelle's doctor; but the doctor talked to the man who was waiting. "Why the hell you couldn't get her here sooner, Sam?" The doctor knew the man. "I'm sorry. But we're doing all we can.... I'll call you later, at home.... Will you be home?" Nothing of what was said really registered with Bernice; nothing could register now.
  She cried and cried; and walked out of the hospital crying, until she realized she was in a taxi riding back to Marina Boulevard, back to the house, in Forest Hill.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She cried and cried; and walked out of the hospital crying, until she realized she was in a taxi riding back to Marina Boulevard, back to the house, in Forest Hill. He showed her the waiting-room near the Operating Room. There was a man waiting there, too. Bernice waited (the man was standing with his back to her) and then a doctor came out, and she stood up, wondering whether this was Estelle's doctor; but the doctor talked to the man who was waiting. "Why the hell you couldn't get her here sooner, Sam?" The doctor knew the man. "I'm sorry. But we're doing all we can.... I'll call you later, at home.... Will you be home?" Nothing of what was said really registered with Bernice; nothing could register now.And a white porter came to Bernice, and rescued her; and took her down, by elevator.