“Sometimes it has seemed to me that life is a series of punishments for such moments of unawareness, that one forges one’s own destiny by what one doesn’t notice or feel compassion for; that what you don’t know and don’t make the effort to understand will become the very thing you are forced into knowledge... Continue Reading →
“As a typical Londoner, Gurcan had a high tolerance for random thoughtlessness; after all, if you live in the big city there's no point complaining that it's a big city, but even that tolerance has its limit and the name of that limit is 'taking the piss'.” Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London I was given the... Continue Reading →
“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude This book. I will definitely judge... Continue Reading →
Story One: 'Terrific Mother' by Lorrie Moore ‘Terrific Mother’ is my first Lorrie Moore. I know she is much praised here so when I saw this Faber mini book I thought why not? Adrienne is 35 years old and childless. The best compliment a woman can get is ‘you’d make a terrific mother’ when they... Continue Reading →
“I was not the woman who breaks into pieces under the blows of abandonment and absence, who goes mad, who dies. Only a few fragments had splintered off, for the rest I was well. I was whole, whole I would remain. To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the... Continue Reading →
‘Her vanity had been stunned by the way in which her book had been received. No trumpets had come thrusting out from behind the clouds, proclaiming ‘genius’ and ‘masterpiece’. For a long time nothing at all happened, and then, slowly, the abuse and sarcasm had begun. The very passages which she had been most proud,... Continue Reading →
‘For God’s sake come to me quickly. She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment. If you delay it might be too late.’ The first short story of Daphne du Maurier that I read was 'Don't Look Now' which hooked me right away. Next, I read 'The Birds' and I knew that I... Continue Reading →
‘Men and women have such a hard time understanding what we want from each other, and our emotions are so foggy we hardly know what we are doing. We get lost in the current. I don’t want that. If I have to do things thaf seem to me to be unnecessary and unsatisfying, I end... Continue Reading →
‘But no one had told them that the most frightening thing of all about the loss of youth is not what is taken away but what is granted in exchange. Not wisdom. Not serenity. Not sound judgment or tranquility. Only the awareness of universal disintegration.’‘They had discovered too that the difference between the living and... Continue Reading →
“always bear in mind that the person who speaks may be lying” ― Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd I spent my early teenage years obsessing over Agatha Christie books. My father has a complete collection of her books and he always urged me to read them - and because I exhausted my comic books and children... Continue Reading →
Her Other Stories 