His obituary described him as mordant and neurotic. I never thought of him as either – he was an inexorable blend of high and low; outraged and enthralled; rapt in wonder and horror. David found the humor in the tragic, and the tragedy in the banal. He was rare and singular; a Canadian and later a…
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘As the brightness increases, the sky flushes with pink and red hues somewhere between birth and Armageddon.’
An excerpt from A.M. Homes’ new novel.
Read the title story from AM Homes' dazzling new collection of short stories, Days of Awe, available now from Granta Books.
‘Even for those of us who feel we have integrated our history, there can be fragments, like shrapnel, that push to the surface without warning.’
‘Blow the candle out, taste the darkness and come back changed.’
Yuka Igarashi talks to A.M. Homes, recipient of the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction for the novel May We Be Forgiven.
‘My father has trouble with his hearing and does not like to talk on the phone, so I talk on the phone mainly to my mother’.
