Atoms like snowflakes
We are in a city where all the streets go up and down, urbanism on an inclined plane, the goddamned omnipresent sea or mountains, sea to the south, mountains to the north, and a scar in the form of an avenue that bisects the city on the diagonal – skewed along a physical, moral, class...
Cuckoo
At first, I thought that old devil of a back problem had returned to haunt me. I assumed the position – lay down, knees up, feet flat on the floor. Unlike Martha, I’m not one for the dramatic, but I did text her to come back ASAP. My no-longer-little niece, Alex, was sat beside me...
The strange art of the short story
When I decided to publish an anthology of short stories, I didn’t guess just how absorbing it would be. I had to choose, and choice focuses the mind beautifully. The short story is an intricate, difficult and intriguing beast. It isn’t a truncated novel but belongs to a genre all of its own and not...
Magpies
The girl tenses when her mother calls her name like that. She clings to the racks; sleeves brushing against her cheek. She crosses the store. Normally, her mother doesn’t like to be overt; only gentle movements when she’s found what she wants. Sometimes the girl won’t even notice. Today, though, she is loud. She is...
Wilde
Inside the Dublin guesthouse, over a breakfast of peppery scrambled eggs, I sat watching the young couple below on the street. They stood on the opposite side of the road, next to the bus stop’s thin yellow pole, bundled up in woollen accessories and thick, dark jackets. They pressed their bodies together, their arms clasping...
Lagoon
I can’t stop taking pictures of the big ships; I’m doing it this afternoon with Teresa, just as I did that day at the end of July in 2013. I was sitting in the usual bar, on the Riva dei Sette Martiri, where you barely even notice the passage of the cruise ships anymore. They...
Everywhere but here
Kristin Hersh is probably the best singer-songwriter you have never heard of. Just like her music, Seeing Sideways: A Memoir of Music & Motherhood (Jawbone press, 7 May) is poetic, lyrical and complex. I’ve been a fan (she prefers the word ‘listener’) since the early 1990s. Her band Throwing Muses has been around since the...
At last
It is another Friday evening, and I climb the four stories of Noor’s building with its small, rectangular windows that let in only thin slivers of brownish yellow light. The lightbulbs on the third and fourth landings are burned out, so I make my way in almost complete darkness by counting the stairs. At first,...
Louise Kennedy: Marks on the ground
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in both 2019 and 2020, and the recipient of many earlier awards, Louise Kennedy has become a leading light in Irish storytelling. Having worked mostly as a chef for thirty years, she began writing at the age of 47 in 2014, and has since completed an...
Love in Ramallah
Unlike most other Palestinian cities, Ramallah is a relatively new town, a de facto capital of the West Bank allowed to thrive after the Oslo Peace Accords, but just as quickly hemmed in and suffocated by the Occupation as the Accords have failed. Perched along the top of a mountainous ridge, it plays host to many contradictions:...
The last hike
It was to be their last hike together. They had decided their relationship was over and they were in the kitchen preparing their rucksacks. Family members had been informed that a separation process had begun. Eileen had spoken to two girlfriends about her new lover, Leonard, and Eric had started gathering funds to climb in...
The secret mission
In the few days that had elapsed since the ghetto was set up in the little Carpathian town of Ostrov, the Jewish Council, the so-called Judenrat, had succeeded in being neither good nor bad, but rather in being wholly naïve. Appointed chairman of the council, Mr Faivel Fischknopf was an elderly Jew with a little...
