The cover image for Anthony De Sa's Kicking the Sky perfectly encapsulates the novel's themes, structure, setting and tone.* A child's bicycle leans against a garage door, the only sign of habitation. The view of the alleyway leaves the safety of home beyond the edges of the scene. The shadows are
Reading Hellgoing makes me wonder about Lynn Coady's personal relationships. Not for the obvious reasons that other readers might identify, stories like "Body Condom" and "Play the Monster Blind". But because I imagine that in order to write a short story, she disappears for a spell. I imagine she crawls
One might say that the narrator of Margaret Drabble's novel is an anthropologist of sorts. Perhaps that would be misleading, however: "Anthropology is full of strange spirit stories, about shamans and witchcraft and night ridings and animal shape-shiftings, stories which hover between myth and fairytale and religion and tribal memories
This is from Gabriel's neighbour, Giuditta. "One day Gabriel opened up more than usual and told me he had four sons. From four different women. In four different countries." The reader wonders if perhaps he opened up more to her than to anyone; Gabriel is a cipher, someone the reader knows
"Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality." Love is the primary force, not only in the events of Fiesta of Love, but in Suzan Hill's
