There was the noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had

Alan Hollinghurst
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The noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had. It was the sound of the famous orchestra at his public school, which he'd listened to so often that he'd learned every note, every word. It was the sound of his parents arguing about money or his sister's boyfriend or anything else. It was the sound of the doorbell afternoons when his mother would give him a dime for Pop-Tarts and drive him to school.

It was the sound of the bus after school when he'd ride home alone through neighborhoods that looked familiar but were different somehow. He thought of other sounds too—the noise outside his bedroom window, for example, which he didn't realize until his family moved to their new house was just another version of this one—the sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had.

Source: The Strangers Child

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