‘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
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
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
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
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
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
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!
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
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
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.
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.
