ginsudo

p. 29:

She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can.

Mrs. Wilson isn’t like the other women in this book, or most other women in Fitzgerald’s work. She’s a full-grown woman, not a dewy debutante or rare orchid in first flower. The idea of sensuous surplus flesh stuck in my head on first reading like a description of a far-off land I’d never heard about before and might never visit. I must have read this book for a decade or more before I understood what kind of woman can carry herself as Mrs. Wilson does.