More great lines from Exile

So, this book is a bit drawn-out and meandering. I understand now why Joanne didn't like it as well as Garnethill. Happily, I have Resolution still to look forward to, but I'll put that off since after that I have no more Maureen O'Donnell novels to read.

I still enjoy Mira's writing greatly even if the story lags a bit:

Sarah had left a bundle of Jesus pamphlets on the table. Each had a catchy title on the cover and mesmerizingly bad drawings of Aryan Jesus telling some black people what to do, Jesus having a laugh with some sheep, baby Jesus chortling in a manger....They were halfway through breakfast when Sarah put her figertips on the bundle of Jesus pamphlets and pushed them across the table to Maureen. "Why not have a read while you're eating?" she said. 
Maureen smiled. "You're fucking joking, aren't you?" she said, and the atmosphere deteriorated from there.

Maureen inhaled and felt the nicotine trickle into her system, tickling her fingers, opening her hair follicles, placating the angry rims of her eyes, kicking her into the day. (This description almost makes me want to start smoking. Compulsive Nicorette chewers should probably find something else to read.) 

She could waste years at home trying to make sense of a random series of events. There was no meaning, no lessons to be learned no moral-none of it meant anything. She could spend her entire life trying to weave meaning into it, like compulsive gamblers and their secret schema. Nothing mattered, really, because an anonymous city is the moral equivalent of a darkened room. She understood why Ann had come here and stayed here and died here. It wouldn't be hard. All she had to do was let go of home. She would phone Leslie and Liam sometimes, say she was fine, fine, let the calls get farther apart, make a up a life for herself and they'd finally forget.