Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell is one of those collections that you’ll remember for a lifetime, a collection that you remember exactly where you where when you read it – it’s memorable and masterful and proves yet again what a force Caldwell is when it comes to the short story form and why she is one
Open with: two men crushed to death in a campervan. Well ok, two men, potentially crushed to death in a campervan. Fate unconfirmed. And besides, it’s more like a caravan really, if we’re being pernickety. Which we are. So two men potentially crushed to death in a caravan. But perhaps we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s back
Gil’d kill for some coffee right now. Grains of sleep linger in his lashes. That trail of gross leaves is still there. He stares. Fuck fresh air, he has just decided. Not fresh air as a thing. Not fuck photosynthesis. Not fuck that. Fuck no. But as a judgment. A kind of putdown. That greener
I. Even now, Zoë can remember all the prices in the Melbourne milk bar that her parents owned. Paddle Pops were seven cents. Sunny Boys were three. Violet Crumbles and Smith’s Crinkle Cut chips both sold for five, the same price as the bus fare to her high school. In those days, two dollars a
Grenth Enterprise Academy Mr. Jackson’s Classroom (2nd floor) Tutor Time—14:45-15:05 Tuesday: Quiet Reading -a thin girl, some would call her pale, but people don’t tend to say that about students so well-endowed in PE even if it’s true. It’s not just that is the thing. Endowed, well, in just about every scholastic or athletic endeavour
Life was good: Domestic arrangement pleasant; kids and grandkids (for the moment) unworrisome; sky bright blue, wind zero. All of which was making her tense and restless. She knew the problem: She was addicted to fiction. She had been a compulsive reader from an early age, when she’d learned that if Nancy Drew and her
Ruminating vows and resolutions, Ludo packs his rucksack. He is going to lie. Even to himself. Whether the latter is possible, and not delusional, is, he decides, a fascinating philosophical question, and in his case the answer is, or will be, ‘yes’. But until the initiation of this trip, he had seemed genetically incapable of
Brutally honest and illuminating, Having and Being Had by Eula Biss is the book we should all be reading, now more than ever. Described as a collection of short, interlinked essays, Biss’ dives into work, possessions, and art are shrewd, funny and yet alarmingly insightful. By aligning these topics with her experiences, Biss acknowledges her
Michael felt like a cliché as he sat alone at the counter of a 24-hour diner. The time of night could best be described with the military designation, “oh-dark.” The only other people in the place were a waitress and two late-middle-aged women huddled close together in a corner booth. Michael didn’t usually drink coffee
Of Foster Homes and Flies is a Pandora’s Box of emotions; love, loss, despair, fear, abuse, hope, desire and transformation. Once you lift that lid (or cover in this situation) you can’t put those feelings back, however hard you try! It’s a book that explores the darkness of growing up in a house devoid of
