“That night seemed very long. Margaret lay in bed without moving, blinking in the darkness, arms laid flat beside her. She tried to remove all thoughts of Karl from her consciousness, filling her head instead with a steady blankness. The emptiness brought relief but not sleep. Some time after midnight she heard her parents arguing, their raised voices puncturing the fragile peace of her non-sleep, and suddenly she could see an image of Karl in her mind’s eye; his slim hands and tawny hair, or his new house, perched precariously on the ridge. Or Nyoman. She could hear Karl’s lilting voice too, and then she’d have to start again, this conscious process of deleting each image one by one, extinguishing them each time they resurfaced, like figures from a shadow play that refused to die. Pull yourself together, Margaret Bates, she repeated; you can do it. There, you see? Falling in love isa matter of choice. Gradually she began to feel better and, some time towards dawn, as sleep finally came to her, she felt herself falling out of love with Karl.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
