From Pure Colour, a novel, which will be published next month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Mira left home. Then she got a job at a lamp store. The lamp store sold Tiffany lamps and other lamps made of coloured glass. Each lamp was extremely expensive. The least expensive one cost four hundred dollars. This was a month’s salary for her. Every day, before they closed up for the night, Mira had to turn off every single lamp. This took about eleven minutes. Mostly she turned off lamps by pulling on little beaded cords. She had to be careful…