''Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terruble to really ever grasp at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realisation dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself - quite to ones surprise - in an entirely different world.'' Donna Tartt - the secret history