To the London Review Bookshop on Tuesday evening to hear Lydia Davis read and discuss her work with Kasia Boddy. My interest was piqued by a recent enthusiastic review in the LRB of Davis's Collected Stories. The collection runs to over 700 pages, yet I'd not come across her work before. Many of the stories …
The Land of Green Plums
I finished reading Herta Müller's The Land of Green Plums last weekend. There's a disturbing childlike quality to the writing, which reminded me a little of Unica Zürn's Dark Spring - the sense of pervasive threat, a thread of brutal violence beneath the sometimes fairytale atmosphere. I did find the novel difficult to get into …
autumnal leanings
It's only the second week of August, yet there's a definite sense that we're on the cusp of autumn. There's a nip to the air in the mornings. The sun is lower in the sky, the shadows are longer, more angled, and by 9 p.m the last light is draining from the sky. Most of …
the week that was
was rather high on stress and somewhat low on culture. The stress arose from a little spate of domestic/technological crises (yes, they do seem to come in threes), and the mundane but wearying frustrations of earning a wage. Still, I did manage an early-ish morning swim at the lido on Thursday, twenty lengths, beneath a …
The Slap
I've just finished reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. And, like his previous novel Dead Europe, I'm quite bowled over by it. I really admire the way he's unafraid to tackle big subjects and modern taboos; how his characters argue and discuss issues many of us struggle with - how should we deal with religious …
dawn chorus
How long did it take me to adjust to the level of noise in London? I can't remember now. I think about this as I lie trying to sleep on another warm, muggy night, the windows open for the bit of breeze which shimmies through the plane trees outside. For about five hours, overnight, there's …
soho sunshine
Thursday afternoon we headed into town to catch the Tacita Dean film Craneway Event at the Frith Street Gallery before it closed this weekend. A warm, rather drowsy afternoon, London teeming with tourists, and just about every pub bedecked with national flags and World Cup 2010 posters. From Piccadilly, we wandered up to Golden Square, …
a year of my life
If, on average, I spend an hour a day writing in my journal (a rough, but sadly fairly accurate, estimate), and there are 24 hours in a day (incontrovertible), and I have been keeping a journal for 25 years (a bit longer, in fact, since the first journal entry is dated 28.11.84); then over those …
come, been and gone
Cultural highlight of the weekend: seeing Michael Clark Company at the Barbican performing come, been and gone. The phrase 'jolie laide' (pretty-ugly) came to mind when I was trying to pinpoint why his work appeals to me so much. The punk aesthetic is still firmly there, in the bizarre costumes, the poking of fun at …
first swim of the summer
8:00 a.m., Tooting Bec Lido. It couldn't be a better morning. A ridiculously blue sky, the sun already warm, the trees surrounding the lido in full resplendent leaf. No dipping my toes this morning, I'm straight down the steps and into the water. It's cold, but not that gasping-takes-your-breath-away cold. I push off and begin …
Hilaire 