The reader would have a much fuller impression of your state of mind if you lovingly evoked, say, the feel of a rug under your feet, the texture of the curtains, the smell of a shawl.

Matvejevic's book, which has been translated by Michael Henry Heim, was first published in Croatian in 1987; its author is a native of Mostar, Herzegovina, a town that has since become famous as an emblem of the collapse of the same transcultural unities he so lovingly evokes.

This "richly detailed, often charming first novel . . . lovingly evokes Pally's journey from innocence to maturity in a town where gossip flourishes and ambitions fade," Ellen Pall wrote here in 1986.

She lovingly evoked the allure of their dancing in "The Ballroom," a new work she presented on Sunday afternoon as part of "Choreography by Pat Catterson."

Mr. Smuin, inexplicably absent from Broadway as a choreographer since "Sophisticated Ladies," does a clever job of finessing the limited dancing abilities of his leads even as he lets his chorus loose in beguine, tap, soft-shoe and ballroom routines that lovingly evoke the Hollywood of Astaire and Hermes Pan.

Amit Chaudhuri's "The Immortals" is a "languid, melancholy novel" about a middle-class family and their music teacher; we conclude that "not much happens" in the story, but that the author "lovingly evokes a fractious, contradictory city caught between tradition and modernization."

Stevie Wonder emerges as a man of greater vision than most who have their sight; the moment Wonder announces to a packed arena that John Lennon has been killed is extraordinarily charged; Michael Jackson's visit to the tour lovingly evokes the magical aura of his youth.

And when it appears the book could become another narrow look at New York-equals-Manhattan, he takes a wide-angle view of the other boroughs, lovingly evoking "Marty," "True Love," "Queens Logic," "Working Girl" and "I Like It Like That."

Not much happens-Sengupta's father ascends the corporate ladder, his mother takes part in recitals and shyly hopes for a record contract, and Sengupta himself discovers philosophy-but Chaudhuri lovingly evokes a fractious, contradictory city caught between tradition and modernization.

The first verse lovingly evokes the New York City antiwar march of Feb. 15, 2003, without naming it: "The crowd kept pushing forward, till they swallowed the police/Yeah, they went wild."