SAUL AND PATSY

A year after they had rented the farmhouse with loose brown aluminum siding on Whitefeather Road, Saul began glaring out the west window after dinner into the unappeasable darkness that pressed against he glass, as if he were angry at the flat uncultivated farmland for being farmland instead of glass and cement. "No sane Jew," he said, "ever lived on a dirt road." Patsy reminded him of Poland, Russia, and the nineteenth century. then she pointed down at the Scrabble board and told him to play. To spite her, he spelled out "axiom" over a triple-word score, for forty-two points...
Saul and Patsy
Charles Baxter

And--
... Something about her facial expression does not match what she is saying; her glance has become shrewd and inquisitorial, almost gleefully full of hatred. She is a woman who knows how to exploit her unattractiveness and unhappiness. She has all the considerable resources of the weak: the rags, the incompetence when dealing with catastrophe, the unendurable face, the incorrect tone, the addictions, the cluelessness, the echoing footsteps out of the ravaged town.
pg. 172

Charles Baxter... Can that man write! First The Feast of Love and now I'm reading Saul and Patsy. I look forward to reading everything he's written.