Tessa McWatt: A place in the world
Tessa McWatt’s The Snow Line throws together four strangers at a wedding in the Indian Himalayan foothills. Twenty-five-year-old Reema is a classical singer born in India but raised as a Londoner, who has travelled without her Scottish boyfriend. Having recently discovered she is pregnant, she is facing a life-shifting decision about her future. Yosh is...
Darker than a deep silence
It was the dead of night – more precisely two o’clock on the morning of Monday 29th September 1893 – when Augusto De Boer and his daughter set off. Such was Jole’s emotion, she could feel her heart bursting. Her hands were cold and sweaty and moved in an awkward way. She had got out...
Description
Joseph and his friend Kevin were driving to New Paltz for a hike. Kevin was driving with one hand, elbow out; Joseph had his whole arm out, hand on roof. They had finished their MFAs in creative writing weeks earlier and they felt great. Kevin had just published an essay in a big-deal magazine that...
Something burned here
The cabin was on a steep slope. It was as remote as it was old. An alpine hut from the eighteenth century. The bathroom had been added at a later date, but the living room was still heated by a wood-burning stove. The snow lay heavy on the pitched roof and on the railing at...
Cheryl Strayed: Once upon a time in the wild
I meet Cheryl Strayed in the offices of her British publisher in Russell Square. She joins me after a breakfast script meeting with Nick Hornby, who is adapting her global bestseller Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found for the big screen. Her excitement about the movie is palpable. Strayed shot to global fame in...
