‘That nothing that’s consumed is real; what’s real is expensive, and gets consumed slowly.’
It was on a Sunday afternoon in spring, a family lunch at the house in Carrasco. The servant is clearing up the coffee cups under the watchful gaze of Isabela, Virna’s svelte mother. Bruno, her hefty Teutonic father, interrupts the conversation and turns to me: How would you like to drive the Peug…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘What does that mean, vegan cheese? asks a lady who’d had no query about amuse-bouche.’
An extract from The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes.
‘Fifty years I’ve played here, except for stretches in Arizona and Mississippi, after my divorce.’
Fiction by Kate Lister Campbell.
‘It was fantastic to own a phone, it was fantastic to have people you loved in your life.’
Fiction by Leif Randt, translated by Ruth Martin.
‘I’m simply trying to do good, Sharon, in the way that I can.’
Fiction by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump.
‘He’ll be a goner soon; the cops will find him hanging in his loo.’
Fiction by Alison Rumfitt.
‘The techniques of hip-hop are always evolving – does that make it an inherently unstable technology, and is that where much of its aesthetic excitement derives from?’
