Choice phrases

I've just started reading Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood (for those of you unfamiliar with her work, she wrote such greats as Cat's Eye, The Edible Woman and The Handmaid's Tale). So far it's a fairly depressing story of two highly dysfunctional couples that fills one with the same sort of dull despair one gets from watching The Ice Storm or reading much of The World According to Garp.

Regardless of how dispiriting the plot is, some of the language is absolutely fantastic. Take, for example, one of my favorite paragraphs so far:

Nate has never known her to be so hard, even during their most violent arguments. What he liked about her at first was her vagueness, her lack of focus, an absence of edges that gave her a nebulous shimmer. Now it's as if she's been dropped on the sidewalk from a great height and has frozen there, all splayed angles and splinters.

Ahhhh. That's good stuff, ladies and gentlemen.