Author Archives: susan

What I really want to talk about is the short story form itself, and these are good stories for that purpose: simple, clear, elemental… For the young writer, reading the Russian stories of this period is akin to a young … Continue reading →

Recently I swore off crime novels (nightmares, basically) but here I am, back again. We started watching Mindhunter on Netflix. It’s about how the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit gathered information from convicted serial killers, so they could begin to understand … Continue reading →

Isn’t this glorious? It’s called pandorea pandorana, or wonga wonga vine, but as I put out the washing this morning with this fecund froth of flower, bud and blossom bursting into full, overblown sweetness close by, what came into my … Continue reading →

Some time in the early 1990’s, in an Op Shop or a second-hand bookshop, I picked up a book called Turn: The Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt. I had no idea at the time who Anne Truitt was. … Continue reading →

The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal Horatio Clare: Elliot and Thompson, London 2018 Sticky goose feathers, tiny hard powder and blurting blown snow, it is a connoisseurs’s winter day. The flash and change of the sky is quite … Continue reading →

Italians know about human nature – they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work … Continue reading →

Our son came up on the weekend, a Father’s Day visit, and he brought with him a couple of issues of the Quarterly Essay for me to read. I have to confess that these days, my news media/current affairs reading … Continue reading →

This tour of Britain’s ‘shadowlands’ is both haunting and horrifying. The writer explores eight lost places. They are the neolithic Skara Brae in Orkney; a once-thriving medieval town of Trellech in Wales; the port of Winchelsea, a 13th century naval … Continue reading →

…if you are a parent, you do something called “parenting”. “To parent” is a goal-directed verb; it describes a job, a kind of work. The goal is to somehow turn our child into a better or happier or more successful … Continue reading →

I had planned – one of those New Year’s resolutions – that this year I would do a monthly roundup of everything I’d been reading. Obviously, I haven’t. I haven’t even done the bare minimum once-a-week book review that I … Continue reading →