hunting hide (pg.102 ) -- A camoflaged tent, used in hunting game.
electric shower (pg. 89) -- A mini water heater, located in the shower!
Ames rooms (pg. 123) -- A distorted room that is used to create an optical illusion.
nevergreen tree (pg. 178) -- "Deadly Nevergreen, that bears fruit all the year round". The gallows.
coves and queans (pg. 199) -- Men and desruptable women, i.e., prostitutes..
... a Dahon mountain bike, built out of chromed aluminium tubes. (pg. 32) -- I see a red aluminium Dahon, and a Reynolds 631 steel Dahon, but I doon't see no chromed aluminium Dahon.
Patricia Thorold-Hjorth and Alfredo Wu (pg. 248) -- So Miriam is a Wu? Where is this plotline going?
It was like standing in that baseball court at the University Of Chicago i942, when they finished adding graphite blocks to the heap in the middle of the court... (pg. 115) Baseball? I thought it was a squash court.
perotation (pg. 196) -- 1 : the concluding part of a discourse and especially an oration. 2 : a highly rhetorical speech.
solecism (pg. 196) -- A violation of etiquette.
inchoate (pg. 198) -- 1. In an initial or early stage; incipient. 2. Imperfectly formed or developed.
toiles (pg. 274) -- A mock-up model of a garment.
buxom caryatids (page 23) -- A sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column.
estuary Egyptian slang (page 60) -- A semi-enclosed body of water flowing into the sea. On reflection, it is obviously referring to the slang used by the peoples of the Nile estuary, since this scene takes places in Alexandria.
anthropophagi (pg. 258) -- Cannibals.
tumuli (pg.9) -- A mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves.
gout (pg. 27) -- A mass or splash, as of blood; spurt. Or in this case, lightning. I think.
Who, who does not have their basket of trips? It isn't right. Molly Collins said that today, standing out the by the church. It isn't right. Well. It isn't. -- Pg. 180
Not the kind of story I would usually read, there not being any spaceships involved, but I liked it enough to finish.
The author is also mildly well known for having a baby in a taxi in Times Square. That is, giving birth in a taxi. In Times Square. New York City.