minsan

“Time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion. That, I think, is the only explanation for what happened to my father and me, just as it happened to Taft and Curry, the same way it will happen to the four of us here in Dod, inseparable as we seem. It’s a law of motion, a fact of physics... Like all things in the universe, we are destined from birth to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.”

 -The Rule of Four

So I cracked open The Rule of Four. I was prepared to read a suspense novel, something ala-Dan Brown that would entertain me while the humidity made me too lazy to crawl out of bed. A thriller set in the halls of Princeton, I was fascinated by bits and pieces of Ivy League life and Italian history (courtesy of one of the character’s thesis).

I was totally unprepared, however, for the subplot of the novel -- the story of four friends, of how circumstances and time’s passage will take its toll on their friendship and eventually tear them apart.

Is it really inevitable, losing one’s friends and the people you love?