Second paragraph of third section of first part (there are only two parts):

It was a movement of hers which had wakened him. Evidently aware that he was awake, Alice turned and put an arm round him. But it was not sex that interested her this morning. She had a number of complaints to deliver, many of them centring on her landlady, Mrs Chivers, who was making her life unnecessarily difficult.

A couple of weeks ago I spotted a Humble Bundle offer with 41 books by Brian Aldiss, of which at least ten were new to me, so I snapped it up. This of course means extra height for Mount Tsundoku, so I am going to work through them gently in increasing order of length, and also use the opportunity to revisit some of the Aldiss books already on my shelves.

The shortest was this 1987 novella, in which a middle-aged man who became rich at a young age drifts between England and America, and from woman to woman, processing the deaths of his parents. There is no sfnal element apart from some possibly prophetic dreams. The protagonist eventually reaches catharsis by befriending a much older woman and the ending may even be a happy one. Although not science fiction, it’s unmistakably Aldiss in style; sparse, quietly thoughtful, but also rather male in a mid-twentieth-century way.

You can get Ruins here. If I keep this up, my next Aldiss will be Enemies of the System.