August 6, 2023

‘I no longer want to read about anything sad. Anything violent, anything disturbing, anything like that. No funerals at the end, though there can be some in the middle. If there must be deaths, let there be resurrections, or at least a Heaven so we know where we are. Depression and squalor are for those under twenty-five, they can take it, they even like it, they still have enough time left. But real life is bad for you, hold it in your hand long enough and you’ll get pimples and become feebleminded. You’ll go blind.’

Margaret Atwood, “Women’s Novels” (published in Murder in the Dark)

11:29am  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxeFRIyz8m00
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Margaret Atwood Canadian literature 
December 6, 2022

‘[…] I can see us there still,’ he said, ‘for those were moments so intense that in a way we will be living them always, while other things are completely forgotten. Yet there is no particular story attached to them,’ he said, ‘despite their place in the story I have just told you. That time spent swimming beneath the waterfall belongs nowhere: it is part of no sequence of events, it is only itself, in a way that nothing in our life before as a family was ever itself, because it was always leading to the next thing and the next, was always contributing to our story of who we were.’

Rachel Cusk, Outline

8:10am  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxd1Bfx8Kq00
(Notes: 6)
  
Filed under: Rachel Cusk British Literature 
July 30, 2021

This ground is getting harder as we dig deeper. It doesn’t look like a grave, just a long hole in the ground. I clear my throat. ‘I think we should call someone to finish this thing.’
Henry smiles and collapses against the grave’s wall. It’s as if he’s been waiting all day for me to say this. He frowns. ‘Arinola –’
I wait for him to finish his sentence, but he says nothing. I watch his furrowed brow; try to understand what his silence means. ‘You don’t want me to tell her we abandoned this?’
’She was very touched that I’d be digging the grave.’
’OK, we’ll tell her you dug the grave.’ It’s the truth – stretched, but still true. Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist? 

Ayòbámi Adébáyò, Stay With Me

3:00pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxaYGbJ3Wm00
(Notes: 5)
  
Filed under: Ayobami Adebayo Nigerian literature 
April 8, 2021

How do others deal with it. For years you share a life, the same house, the same bed, the same (or so you dare to believe) future plans. You spend so much time together, rarely make a move without consulting the other, reach a point where it’s hard to say where one of you ends and the other begins – 

[…]

– and then, incredibly within the same lifetime (and how short, after all, is that) comes a day when you know nothing of even the most important details of the other’s life.

Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through

2:00pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxZzt-uNeq00
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Sigrid Nunez American literature 
October 25, 2020

The man in the green suit said a woman is for loving. If you love a woman enough she will unburden herself. That is the sweetest woman there is, a woman who has been loved well enough. This was the truest woman there was and a man could live a happy life. He looked at her directly and spoke to her alone. She looked away. She wanted to raise her voice loud and say that it was not like that at all, it was that a woman must love herself enough. A woman like that is the sweetest woman there is. She believed this but could not say it. What kept her quiet was that she remained puzzled by one aspect of her belief, the question she could not answer was how a woman got to do that, how she got to love her own knees, and kiss her own elbows, how she got to feel she was all the breeze there is and all the mornings there are and all the loving there could be. And then seek something more which perhaps only another can provide, and love a man simply because she could, and indeed something in him made her heart beat, and yes, her knees weak with the flow of his tender caress. Finding herself, that was it. She did not know what this entailed. 

Yvonne Vera, Butterfly Burning

2:14pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxZ8nIyv4q00
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: Yvonne Vera Zimbabwean literature 
August 24, 2020

A crowd is a terrible thing. I know it’s foolish to say so because mostly a crowd has a purpose: commuters, shoppers, that posse of media in my front yard. In a crowd, pretty well everyone has a place to be. But for me, even after all this time, it’s different, unnerving. I look at every face, assess every shape and size. I get entangled in the impossible knot of all those lives: the way they walk, hold their heads; their voices as they pass. Once, near the old bus station, I heard a frantic call, ‘Robbie, Robbie,’ and the accent was English and I said to myself, Don’t turn around. She always said your full name. It’s not her. It can’t be her.

But at the last minute, I did turn, and I saw a woman with her arms outstretched, and a black dog racing away trailing a glittery red lead. And when someone caught the lead as the dog shot past, bringing him up tight like a cartoon character, front paws pedalling in the air, I burst into a crazy cackle. Too loud, too high. And everyone stared – some with frozen smiles from watching the dog – because I was a man laughing alone in a crowd. A man who didn’t have a place to go.

Amanda O’Callaghan, “The Turn” (published in This Taste for Silence)

2:24pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxYqqI5qeu00
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Amanda O’Callaghan Australian literature 
August 16, 2020

The arrangement that David would come home only on his days off suited both of us well. For the first time in my life, I felt secure and confident. I didn’t want anything to change, but underlying this security was the deep-rooted fear of giving too much of myself and in the end being abandoned again. I tried to prepare myself for this outcome by erecting barriers: walls which not only kept others out, but also locked in all the old fears and anxieties.

Farida Karodia, A Shattering of Silence

8:08pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxYoKPpz4a00
Filed under: Farida Karodia South African Literature 
May 9, 2020

My father was never much one for whining. In the nineteen years I knew him, he hardly spoke of his turn in the Russian army, or of making ends meet with my mother, or of the day she walked out on us. He certainly didn’t complain about his health as it failed.

But one night near the end, as I was sitting at his bedside trying to entertain him with an anecdote about some nincompoop with whom I worked, out of the blue he shared a reflection which seemed like such a non sequitur that I attributed it to delirium. Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice.

Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

7:32am  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxYIIFyrui00
Filed under: Amor Towles American literature 
March 31, 2020

he was a good student at secondary school but soon understood he was seen as a bad person outside it
as an enemy of the nation on account of his skin colour
to be stopped and frisked by the cops, which began when he was twelve and looked fifteen, terrified when these grown men manhandled him in the street in front of everyone, tried hard not to cry, sometimes did
their parting shot, on your way, Sunshine, you’re lucky this time
it was scary, creepy and emasculating, he told Shirley the first time he let his guard down and confided in her, every time it happened I was relieved that I wasn’t beaten up or killed in a police van or cell
I was a good boy who didn’t mix with ruffians or get into fights
I started wearing suits outside of school, even though my mates laughed at me and others thought I’d become a Jehovah’s Witness
I was a good boy who walked to Leeds Central Library every Saturday afternoon to pick up my supply of books for the week because I wanted to be well-read
Great Aunt Myrtle drilled it into me to be a person with knowledge, not just opinions
I decided to be a solicitor, maybe even a criminal barrister
these days when the police try it on, I let them know I’m a lawyer and they think twice about putting their filthy hands where they don’t belong

Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

10:00am  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxY5m-mvWe00
Filed under: Bernadine Evaristo British literature 
March 27, 2020

how very inconsiderate, not to her
to choose to throw yourself in front of a mechanical iron beast weighing thousands of tons and racing at a top speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour?
to choose such a brutal and dramatic finale
Carole knows what drives people to such despair, knows what it’s like to appear normal but to feel herself swaying
just one leap away
from
the amassed crowds on the platforms who carry enough hope in their hearts to stay alive
swaying
just one leap away from
eternal
peace

Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

6:46pm  |   URL: https://tmblr.co/ZH_IJxY4c7W94e00
Filed under: Bernadine Evaristo British literature