A whiff of murder
There are many ways to wake up in the morning. At the castle of Roccapendente, for example, the servants were awakened by the crowing of a cock, the one creature enthused by the fact that once again the sun had managed to roll up over the mountains. Among them were some who did not hear,...
One lady owner
A provocative and darkly comic look at marital relations, pregnancy, romance and fantasy, Penelope Skinner’s The Village Bike premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London in June 2011, and now comes to the MCC Theater in New York in a new production directed by Sam Gold and starring Greta Gerwig. Here’s how it begins… ...
The global thermostat
For the globe as a whole, the ocean is the great regulator, the great stabiliser of temperatures. It has been described as “a savings bank for solar energy, receiving deposits in seasons of excessive insolation and paying them back in seasons of want.” Without the ocean, our world would be visited by unthinkably harsh extremes...
A kind of living
There would certainly have been other alternatives; our hero could have stolen cars, salvaged the copper from telephone cables or sold his kidneys. But of all the bad offers, the one from Yegor Kugar was the best. It guaranteed him a year’s employment, transport to the scene of operations and even a job for his...
The four Christophers
We have the same memory. It’s very early. The sun has just come up. The three of us – father, mother and son – are yawning sleepily. Mum’s made some tea or coffee, and we duly drink it. We’re in the living room, or the kitchen, as still and quiet as statues. Our eyes keep...
Another side of Borges
We would begin our stroll down the Avenida Belgrano, a wide, busy, modern thoroughfare, trying to speak over the roar and fumes of the traffic. The ubiquitous snub-nosed buses crawled along in step with us, throbbing and belching their murderous black exhaust in our faces. Borges never seemed to notice. He was too busy discussing...
Landscape in winter
The times are turning bad again. I have been arrested for going to see a private art collection. Can you believe it? An old man of nearly eighty, a retired magistrate, is put in prison on suspicion. Instead of sitting on a dais giving judgment, here I am sitting on a stone floor waiting to...
Conquered
The days and the weeks dragged on, and the months dragged on. The snow fell and melted and fell and melted and finally fell and stuck. The dark buildings of the little town wore bells and hats and eyebrows of white and there were trenches through the snow to the doorways. In the harbor the...
An affectionate regard
One of the old roads leaving a well-known county town in the west of England climbs a long slope and finally reaches a kind of open plain, a windy spot from which a wide prospect of the countryside is available. Fields of corn occupy the near and middle distance, while the rolling downs further off...
Not so very different
My name is Adeliza Golding. I am born breech and nearly kill Mother. I hear her muffled screams from within the dark warmth of her belly and kick my feet to rid her of me. I enter the world in a flood of fluid and blood, pulled by the hands of Doctor. When I cry...
The bear
There was a bear. Life in the woods, where he lived with the other bears, had begun to sicken him. The bear would go to the edge of the forest and watch the people who lived in the small town below. The stature of the buildings, the play of light on glass, the swish of...
A state of affairs worth fighting for
Homage to Catalonia chronicles George Orwell’s experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War. He brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity as he describes the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic time: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he...
