I've said it before and it's likely I'll never stop saying it or thinking it: without fiction, I'd have no sense of empathy. None at all. Well, perhaps an operating function, a sense, but nothing any deeper. Able to observe, but not able to connect. Get in there and understand, see through another's eyes, feel someone else's emotions. All of that immeasurably valuable. Humanity plus.

Since finishing "A long, long way" a few days ago, I've been wondering if any of these modestly sized turn of the century houses were handed a telegram during the first world war which spun them from one life into another. And now barely a few pages into Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" I've been gifted an insight I never expected; I can't think of describing it as anything other than 'will this be place"? Wistful hopes, if that makes sense, might be another.

The insight is this: a freshly married couple spend their early years moving from town to town as her ambitious salesman husband steps up the career ladder. She gazes at: ...each new town with hopeful eyes and think (s): this may be where I'll have my son..."

I read that and almost instantly thought of several women I know; have they felt like this, were this character's inner hopes, theirs? In the house I'm in now, did the couple who live here, imagine, mud, strewn toys, sleepovers, parties, ferrying kids to after school events? There's another woman, one who I have felt the most I've ever felt for any living person other than my parents; did she look at London and have this hope deep in her heart?

God bless fiction. Without it, I'd probably be an emotional still-born.