Fiction - Five Dials

Ali Smith’s Quartet for All Seasons

‘Summer’s surely really all about an imagined end.We head for it instinctually like it must mean something. Like there really is a kinder finale and it’s not j... Read more

‘Grand Designs’ (series 16, episode 4)

by Yara Rodrigues Fowler

A note to the reader Before you start reading — please play ‘Terra’ by Caetano Veloso out loud. If you do not speak Portuguese, copy and paste the lyrics... Read more

Strangers

by Kathy Page

Louise’s assigned seat on the 787 that took her home after her father’s death and its aftermath was in her least preferred position, the middle of the middle: 3... Read more

‘We have an expectation that loss comes all at once.’

Avni Doshi discusses her novel, Burnt Sugar

Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar is a love story: a tale of obsession and betrayal. But not between lovers: between mother and daughter. Their unsettled relationship sp... Read more

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

by Philippe Besson

I was seventeen years old when I read The Lover for the first time. It was the autumn of 1984, the book had just come out, and people were talking about it a lo... Read more

‘Another thing that fascinates me: one sentence can reveal so much about a person.’

A conversation with Lydia Davis

This month I read Lydia Davis’s latest, Essays, before our arranged phone conversation. Davis’s writing voice is always articulate and persuasive, especially wh... Read more

Edna O’Brien, ‘Girl’ and the author’s right to freedom of movement

by Nathalie Olah

The adage ‘stay in your lane’, beloved of creative writing and journalism circles, has become a mantra for a generation seeking to navigate an era of fast-movin... Read more

Mother’s Day Card From a Wooden Object

by Ben Pester

Mother! At an unusual time of year, and in an impractical format, this card is to say thank you (again) for raising me. I realize it’s a recurring theme with... Read more

Speaking to Emilie Pine

The author of Notes to Self on blood, the body and Beckett

As an associate professor of modern drama, Emilie Pine is used to employing the disembodied writing style of academic discourse. The voice comes from afar, or a... Read more

God’s Photograph

by Joe Stretch

Every hundred yards or so the motorway lights lit her face. She tilted her head and administered eye drops. She’d used a bronze foundation to blend the new part of her face with the old.

Her Lovely Meaningless Face

Sara Collins on Wide Sargasso Sea

As much as I hold the novel dear, for all the work it does to penetrate the experience of the white Creole, Wide Sargasso Sea never seems to cross the border of black skin.

Hannah has been in bed for a week. She knows the different textures and pressures and eccentric lumps of her bed like the back of her hand. Better. She does not know the back of her hand very well at all.