It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world’s […]

You’ve been wondering about your own relationship to open water. You’ve been wondering about the trauma and how it always finds its way to the surface, floating in the ocean. You’ve been wondering about how to protect that trauma from consumption. You’ve been wondering about departing, about being elsewhere. You have always thought if you […]

It turned out that it was Ramsay Coker who was in charge over at the Sphinx. In Freda’s opinion, Ramsay Coker was a first-class twit. His head was always in the clouds. ‘I’m writing a novel,’ he told her, as if that was something to crow about, as if there weren’t enough novels in the […]

Daylight was appearing over London, the great city of bachelors. Half-pint bottles of milk began to be stood on the doorsteps of houses containing single apartments from Hampstead Heath to Greenwich Park, and from Wanstead Flats to Putney Heath; but especially in Hampstead, especially in Kensington. In Queen’s Gate, Kensington, in Harrington Road, The Boltons, […]

And for two hours the wine was poured, the cheese cut, and the two men talked. Of what? Who knows? Of love, of war, of the past. And they listened with hearts instead of ears, and in the candle-lit kitchen three floors up in an old palazzo, death was put on hold. Sarah Winman: Still […]

I used to spend my coffee-break and my tea-time with Connie, sometimes in her office, sometimes in mine. My job was to collect from her those few new manuscripts that had a faint possibility of being shaped into a book for publication, or whose authors should perhaps be nurtured. It was a very tentative affair, […]

At this point perhaps I should say a word about myself. My name is James Donaghue, but you needn’t bother about that, as I was in Dublin only once, on a whiskey blind, and saw daylight only twice, when they let me out of Store Street police station, and then Finn put me on the […]

Since overhearing her and Deborah’s conversation on the night of the pizza, I had become hungrier for more clues about my mother, yet simultaneously more fearful of what I might discover. So far, Connie had proven prickly when questioned about her life, and only liked to talk about things when she could control the information […]

Now the story of Warrender Chase was in reality already formed, and by no means influenced by the affairs of the Autobiographical Association. But the interesting thing was, it seemed rather the reverse to me at the time. At the time; but thinking it over now, how could that have been? And yet, it was […]

From the lower-floor dormitories the people in the street looked larger, and the paths of the park were visible. All the nice people were poor, and few were nicer, as nice people come, than these girls at Kensington who glanced out of the windows in the early mornings to see what the day looked like, […]

Ovensuussa Alistair empi. “Olisi yksi asia.” “Niin?” Lääkäri selaili pöydällään lojuvia papereita, etsi seuraavan tulijan tietoja. “Muutama kaveri, jonka kanssa ystävystyin… no, he eivät selvinneet Ranskasta kotiin. Ja nyt… nyt taidan pysytellä aika lailla omissa oloissani.” “Niin pitääkin”, lääkäri sanoi. “Odottakaa vain rauhassa, kunnes piristytte.” Alistair kuitenkin empi yhä ja pohti, voisiko asian ilmaista paremmin. […]

Then he spoke in a voice more menacing than Robin had ever heard, the more so because he half crooned the words, so close to the receiver that he seemed to be breathing into her ear. ’Do A know you, little girl?’ Robin tried to speak, but no sound came out. The line went dead. […]