A life as dull as one's parents'

Gloria's parents led drab, listless lives that the wearing of pearl-and-gilt earrings and the reading of detective novels did little to enliven. Gloria presumed her life would be quite different–that glorious things would happen to her (as her name implied), that she would be illuminated within and without and her path would scorch like a comet's. This did not happen!

Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2006), p. 24.