unvarying

The Ukrainian leader’s message has been unvarying: His country’s bloody confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin is Europe’s fight, too.

He clung to a working-class ethos, installing all his work himself until he was too old to do so and dressing in an unvarying uniform of blue bib overalls, which he wore even during his trial.

Called dermatoglyphics, it relies on the assumption that the tiny ridges on a person’s fingertips form permanent, unvarying patterns that are unique to that individual.

Brinkley’s narrator in “That Particular Sunday” nails this precise difficulty while trying to capture the weight and texture of his relatives’ now-lost apartment: “This kind of boiled down nonsense might as well be in a newspaper clipping, or an obituary. It’s the kind of thing I find difficult to bear. It doesn’t mean a thing. It doesn’t capture what it felt like to be there. The depth of feeling that was reliable and unvarying.”

Fans of “Please Look After Mom” who are hoping to experience that novel’s many emotional highs and lows will likely notice that Shin’s newest book is steeped in an almost unvarying tone of sadness and grief.