Artful polished-chrome accents around the upper and lower grille and at the taillights have lifted the dreariness from the Civic's exterior.

WSJ: 2013 Honda Civic EX Review: Back to Where It Once Belonged | Rumble Seat by Dan Neil

She would escape the bare concrete steps, layered with dust, that led up into rooms without windows, the walls painted lurid, glossy colors, as if to make up for the dreariness, the television covered with an embroidered cloth.

NEWYORKER: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Stefan is the son of a cast-off diplomat who is sacked from the East German foreign service for a minor misdemeanour just as the Vogel family was about to be posted to New York and escape the dreariness of East Berlin.

ECONOMIST: New fiction