In front of a closed gallery, Valencia Street

If Peter Stamm's fine novel Seven Years was to be stepped on and thereby flattened to fifteen words or less, those words might be found on pg. 174, when Sonia, stroking the back of her adopted baby's head, says that she always wanted to have black hair, "like the American Indians." 

"Like Nscho-Tschi, I said." ("I" is Alexander, her husband, father of  the baby he and Sonia have adopted.)

"No, said Sonia. I wanted to be Winnetou, not the girl."

That the biology of one's sexuality is one's destiny is the heart of Stamm's book.  

Another writer, asked the other night, and what is your book about?, answered, it's about being able to sit alone in a room for one hour without wanting to be anywhere else.