Featured Passage, The Cookbook Collector

As I said in Tueday's post, Goodman's The Cookbook Collector is primarily character driven.  So today, I thought I might feature a passage that describes my favorite character from the book, George.  Enjoy!

"He was attractive and he knew it, but he pretended he had no idea.  Therefore he was both vain and disingenuous.  Tall, or so he seemed to Jess, he looked Italian with his dark skin and dark eyes.  Very old--again, from Jess's point of view--where anyone past thirty harked back to another era altogether.  Despite his years, George had a powerful body, a broad chest, a face of light and shade, a glint of humor even in his frown.  When he wasn't lobbing his sarcastic comments, he seemed scholarly and peaceful, like a Renaissance St. Jerome at work in his cave of books.  All he needed was a skull on his desk and a lion at his sandaled feet.  He wore T-shirts, jeans, rimless reading glasses, sometimes tweed jackets.  He had the deep didactic voice of a man who had smoked for years and then suddenly quit and now hated smokers everywhere.  He never watched television, and he never tired of telling people so.  But the most pretentious thing about him was his long hair.  With his chestnut locks threaded gray, he was a fly caught in amber, the product and exemplar of a lost world."