Word: plante
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wisdom, smarts, heartache, all beautiful like a flock of birds scared up off the cove, all beautiful like the sound of cellos..." he had thought himself equal to the task of caring for her as she deteriorated. After he forfeits his well-loved job at the local nuclear power plant in a final act of loyalty to cover a policy mistake, he inventories his suddenly unsatisfactory life and realizes what a drain Billie has become, and vanishes...
...doesn't travel very far, however, because he still loves Billie and because he wants to be useful in the face of a crisis at the nuclear power plant. His wandering contrasts nicely with Hex's, who in the course of the evening on which the book is set takes his mother to a restaurant and to a hospital, drunkenly stalks Lou in an effort to convince him to return to Billie, and kindles a romance with the dreamgirl of his adolescence as she falls into his life "like an influenza." All the while, Hex and Billie are haunted...
Moody's exceptional command of language is largely responsible for the success of these characters and of Purple America. He's got a knack for poeticizing the mundane with a well-placed, nicely phrased philosophical riff, like when Lou interrupts his constant agonizing over the power plant to observe "the sun balanced on the very spot where sea meets coast." The nuances of Hex's odd childhood, when pretentious Billie served him meals with "frozen foods accompanying the fine wines of Bordeaux," and when Hex wanted nothing more than to muse over "the math of [girls'] pulses," are immaculately rendered...
...plant runs though the winter to cool laboratories or other locations with special needs...
Currently, the chilled water plant is expanding from 8,000 to 13,000 tonnage. To put this into perspective, Hawkes says a typical window air-conditioning unit in a bedroom is half...