“It is August now, towards the end, and the weather can no longer be trusted.” The gentle rhythm in MacLeod’s sentence is responsible for its being a favourite of mine. Such an ordinary opening to such a startlingly subversive –and topical—story. With the findings of the IPCC report and
“I am speaking now of a July in the early 1970s and it is in the morning just after the sun has risen following a night of heavy rains.” The summer schedule for these stories is more crowded, so this story would fall near July and the next later
In the first week of Covid-19 lockdown, I pulled The Box Garden off the shelf, opened it to read: “That there are no certainties in life. That we change hourly or even from one minute to the next, our entire cycle of being altered, our whole selves shaken with
In Iris Murdoch’s Henry and Cato (1976), Henry Marshalson inherits the family estate when his brother Sandy dies. Henry returns to the home where his mother Gerda still lives, with her kinda-sycophantic admirer, Lucius. Cato lives nearby. So does Colette. Stephanie does not, but, because of her pre-existing
You might remember that, back when we met Linnet Muir, four stories ago, she explained her particular kind of aloneness. unsplash-logoCris DiNoto This story travels back in time further than the previous three and creates a deeper understanding of her state of being. Even in childhood, Linnet was alone. Even
