"He had this feeling of inner peace which was not of a religious but of a social kind. He liked to indulge in these Christmas rituals, which in fact meant nothing to him. He did not have to do it. He celebrated Christmas on his own, after all…"
It was Christmas Eve and Professor Andersen had a Christmas tree in the living room. He stared at it. `Well, I must say,' he thought. `Yes indeed, I must say.' Then he turned and ambled round the living room, while...
Tuesday, 6 December, 2011
More Character studies
Inside the grimy plastic bag was a passport and ten hundred dollar bills. Kate stuffed the bills into her little white-lace pinny and flicked through the passport to remind herself who she was going to be next. She read the... More...
Andrew Kaufman is a Canadian writer, film director and radio producer. All My Friends are Superheroes, Kaufman's debut novel, became a major word-of-mouth hit, and is now being developed into a feature film. More...
Useful is his name. One of them at least. Everyone has multiple names in this mixed up modern world - Roman names, Greek names, state names, slave names, religious names - it can't always have been like that. It wasn't.... More...
Audrey Jennings was a sucker. Not the kind of sucker who falls for anything, but the kind who falls for the same sort of thing over and over. She was smart enough, in a bookish sort of way. She had... More...
The first time I lay eyes on Valentin I knew that he was to be my destiny. It sounds foolish, I expect, but then I expect I am a foolish girl, and I would not be otherwise. For if I... More...
Spying through the crack between her son's drawn curtains she watched her neighbour peg wet clothes on a plastic line that had been strung by her husband, tied from a hook above the back door to a nail he'd set... More...
long before my master started playing with fire, while I was enjoying a few months' pleasant rest, just watching life unfold around me, fresh air in my lungs, a skip in my step, I ran, how I ran, and at... More...
My name is Catherine Rozier, please don't call me Cathy. If you do I'll jump. Don't think I'm bluffing. It's a 3000-foot drop and even though I'm fat, I'm not fat enough to bounce. I'll dive headfirst into ye ancient... More...
A name and a photograph: that was all Ana had. She should have asked for more, made her father and Helena give her some real information, but it was never a topic they encouraged her to speak about, to... More...
A young woman phoned me one morning. It was during that period when there was a lot of snow on the ground. It had fallen in a crazy dramatic blizzard and then hung around, freezing over, so that it was... More...
That morning Jerusalem's Arab neighbourhoods were teeming with the usual preparations in the souk. A muffled clamour filled Jamal's head as he set out with his daughters, carrying in his right hand a small suitcase with the girls' personal belongings.... More...
'I think I may die,' Rebecca said aloud one morning. She did not mean she intended to kill herself. Only that things seemed suddenly more than she felt she could bear. It was to a single sparrow out on her... More...
The last time I remember being happy - properly happy, wind-in-my-hair happy -were when we went away for Becka's twenty-first. She'd been dropping hints for ages that she were expecting something special. 'Paris, Rome, Milan. I'm not fussy.' We... More...
At a quarter past nine on the north side of the river, Alec Demeter stepped out of his front door and into a waiting black cab. Eric had picked him up at the same time every weekday morning for... More...
Gail sits at her computer at a bow legged circular table, crowded with books unwatered plants, a cloche covering a bunch of leaves - black with age, a lit candle, a red rose encased in Perspex and a pair of... More...
In a coffee shop on Dead Elm Street, Norma assembles the chicken bones on her plate into an arrow pointing at her stomach. Once, in a magazine, she'd seen a picture of a hen split open down the breast, unzipped... More...
Miriam was fighting a cold. She wanted to be fighting it in bed, tended by Ezra and wrapped in a comforter. She wanted, in general, to be comforted, but instead she was making her way through an inexplicably crowded sidewalk,... More...
Once they were gone, he emptied their home of everything but his bed, his desk, the clothes in his closet, kitchen table, refrigerator, washer, dryer, and two chairs, one for eating, and one for writing letters. Pictures, couches, wardrobes, the... More...
Everyone knew what New York looked like. Especially from a boat that should have passed the Statue of Liberty on its way in to dock. For him to have mistaken this for that was unimaginable. For him to have had... More...
No one would ever suspect that our quiet, mild-mannered clerk, Stephan, might be a freemason. And yet it turned out to be true. The news brought by one of our colleagues spread through the office like a wildfire and... More...
My father named me Aaliya, the high one, the above. He loved the name, and I was constantly told, loved me even more. I did not remember. He passed away many months before my second birthday. More...
