Everything depended, my sleeping peacefully, my being able to work, my confidence in myself, upon the only bond by which I held her, the words, extracted not always quickly from her, that she loved me.Alfred Hayes, 'In Love' Through our narrator, a 40-year old man living in New York in 1950s, we are taken into... Continue Reading →
Book review: Katalin Street by Magda Szabó
‘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 →
Book Review: The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf
Then a terrible shriek came from the middle of the crowd, as if someone has set his foot upon a burning thorn, as if his foot being nailed to the earth with nails of fire, as if flames were shooting through his marrow. The crowd fell apart, all eyes drawn to the foot to which... Continue Reading →
Review: Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
I told Helen my stories and she went home and cried Reading this first line at a bookstore instantly made me rush to the cashier to pay. I wanted to sit and do nothing but found out what had happened to the narrator. Sophia is a twenty-one and naive artist living in England in the... Continue Reading →