Tinhead
One night in March of this year, Tinhead left the house he shared with his mother and brother,...
Fiction
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. […]...
‘Grand Designs’ (series 16, episode 4)
A note to the reader Before you start reading — please play ‘Terra’ by Caetano Veloso out loud....
Strangers
Louise’s assigned seat on the 787 that took her home after her father’s death and its aftermath was...
‘We have an expectation that loss comes all at once.’
Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar is a love story: a tale of obsession and betrayal. But not between lovers:...
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
I was seventeen years old when I read The Lover for the first time. It was the autumn...
‘Another thing that fascinates me: one sentence can reveal so much about a person.’
This month I read Lydia Davis’s latest, Essays, before our arranged phone conversation. Davis’s writing voice is always...
Edna O’Brien, ‘Girl’ and the author’s right to freedom of movement
The adage ‘stay in your lane’, beloved of creative writing and journalism circles, has become a mantra for...
Mother’s Day Card From a Wooden Object
Mother! At an unusual time of year, and in an impractical format, this card is to say thank...
Speaking to Emilie Pine
As an associate professor of modern drama, Emilie Pine is used to employing the disembodied writing style of...
God’s Photograph
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
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.