"I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea. Time flowed past indifferently above us; hours and days had no meaning."

"I scarcely know how to describe the room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room. I did not really stay there very long- we met before spring began and I left there during the summer- but it seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea change there."

I cannot conceive of how anyone could give Giovanni's Room less than five stars. Baldwin is able to convey such a very specific flavor of lovelorn, of the feelings of disgust that can coexist with love, of the preciousness of a perfect and brief period between two people that burns out too quickly. It hurt to read, it made me feel romantically nostalgic, and it filled me with appreciation for the written word. James Baldwin is peerlessness everlasting.