"The Summer Before the Dark" is a 1973 novel by British/Southern African writer Doris Lessing, detailing one summer in the life of Kate Brown, a middle aged, middle-class woman who leaves a stable but satisfying life for a summer of travel, adultery and slumming. My edition is just under 250 pages, and it is told in mostly naturalistic prose.

The basic structure of the plot is episodic. With her home an empty nest after her children have all moved out, and her husband, a doctor, going to a conference, she gets a job as a translator from the Portuguese for an international food production organization, and spends the summer jetting around Europe with wealthy people from around the world. (And unlike many of the intertrashionalists I know, she actually has the self-awareness to realize how privileged she is). After this, she decides to have an affair with a younger man she meets at the conference, and together they travel to Francoist Spain, where

​​Graffiti was almost synonymous with New York City in the 1980s. Billboards, buildings, and subways were decorated with hundreds of thousands of works in a myriad of different colors, sizes, and styles. In the eyes of most New York state officials, Graffiti was a crime which fell into two distinct categories. The first of these categories was that of criminal mischief. When viewed in this light, Graffiti was a public nuisance, an act of vandalism similar to that of breaking a window. However,

I went out for a walk one day

and I saw a girl who was very sad.

She cried and she cried.

I asked her why but she wouldn’t say

and I looked down;

daisies grew in the grass at my feet.

I plucked one and smiled.

I gave her the flower.

I took my dog for a walk the next day

and I saw her again.

Still crying, still sad.

I asked her why but she still wouldn’t say

and I looked up;