Saturday night I finished Jack Maggs right before bed, but I was tired so I slept. In the morning when I woke I lay there, thinking about the characters, what had happened to them, and what their lives would be like, now that the book was over, as though they were myself. Something that comforts me, even though it shouldn’t comfort anyone, is the thought, We don’t know how the story ends, and in the best books this is as true as it is in life.