“For about twenty-five years I have been copying sentences into the back pages of whatever notebook I happen to be using,” writes Brian Dillon in the introduction to Suppose a Sentence, a meditative collection of essays on sentences in literature that have captivated the critic and author of Essayism. The book follows an addictive format of featuring a single sentence—from authors such as James Baldwin, Joan Didion, John Dunne, and Shakespeare—and then using the essay to mull on aspects about Dillon’s reading experience, each essay short and complex, as well as personal and enriching. Suppose a Sentence satisfies the writer as much as the reader of literature, as Dillon makes a case, again and again, for the moving and lasting power of the sentence.
