singular object

I have begun to think the same of the Australian handlebar moustache; a singular object transported from generation to generation to denote halcyon years for whoever is bestowed it.

KASHIMA, Japan — The U.S. women’s soccer team had returned to this silent place some 90 minutes outside Tokyo to collect one thing, a singular object that — for a program that has fielded unfamiliar questions and faced unfamiliar doubt during these Olympic Games — communicated so much.

Our critic Jennifer Szalai calls it “a remarkable book, striking a delicate balance between two seemingly incommensurate approaches: Miles’s fidelity to her archival material, as she coaxes out facts grounded in the evidence; and her conjectures about this singular object, as she uses what is known about other enslaved women’s lives to suppose what could have been.”

“All That She Carried” is a remarkable book, striking a delicate balance between two seemingly incommensurate approaches: Miles’s fidelity to her archival material, as she coaxes out facts grounded in the evidence; and her conjectures about this singular object, as she uses what is known about other enslaved women’s lives to suppose what could have been.

It suggests the beginning of a project to replace every lumpy, singular object in the universe with a sleek, machine-tooled counterpart.