Parrot
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Five Cats and Three Women
J. Robert Lennon
‘While he didn't mind (not much anyway) being responsible for the death of one cat, his cat, he did not feel good shouldering the death of four cats.’
Termite’s Birthday, 1959
Jayne Anne Phillips
‘It's like by the time he was born there was too much to know.’
The Tutor
Nell Freudenberger
‘He hated the idea of learning words from a list; it was like taking vitamin supplements in place of eating.’
An Education
Lynn Barber
‘Alan was adept at not answering questions, but actually he rarely needed to, because I never asked them.’
Best of Young British Novelists 2003: Introduction
Ian Jack
‘What had been an exercise to publicize the literary novel, at a time when there were few spotlights on this particular branch of culture, might now have a new role as an independent consumer's guide to novelists who deserved to be read in an era where 'a thrilling debut by a young writer of enormous talent' is the standard blurb, and where there are now so many spotlights directed by marketing money and the size of the writer's advance.’
Helen and Julia
Sarah Waters
‘She felt exhausted, emptied out; she thought of the day that had passed—it was astonishing to her, that a single set of hours could contain so many separate states of violent feeling.’
Dinner with Dr Azad
Monica Ali
‘Six months now since she'd been sent away to London. Every morning before she opened her eyes she thought, if I were the wishing type, I know what I would wish.’
Gas, Boys, Gas
Andrew O’Hagan
‘The men were quiet. They said nothing for a minute and the sea at my back was calm and almost imaginary, but you could hear the waves coming to wash the chalk cliffs from under us.’
At The Villa Cockroft
Dan Rhodes
‘In Bosnia, it seemed, a deal was a deal and the Bosnian was ready to pay his rent.’
Field Study
Rachel Seiffert
‘The bushes grow dense across the top of the drop, but Martin can just see through the leaves: young mother and son, swimming in the pool hollowed out by the waterfall.’
The Hare
Toby Litt
‘For some little while now I have been chasing a hare—buck or doe, I do not know.’
After Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac
Rachel Cusk
‘It was right after he was born that I started looking at paintings.’
The January Man
David Mitchell
‘You'll be sorrier when the ice cracks. Do you know how many boys are under there now? Eleven, and they're very sorry indeed.’
The Clangers
Susan Elderkin
‘Perhaps she'll smile—a big, welcoming smile that invites him to tell her everything.’
Leading Men
Peter Ho Davies
‘Outside, a technicolour sunset is giving way to the silvery sweep of searchlights, as a hand tugs the blackout curtain across the sky.’
Look at Me, I’m Beautiful!
Ben Rice
‘When I came back from Gwen's I had expected to find him in the throes of his midlife koisis—you know—trimming an anal fin in the bath, or nursing a slime coat at the very least.’
Here We Go
David Peace
‘The finance officers read the answers in silence, then returned them to be burned.’
Martha, Martha
Zadie Smith
‘Outside a plane roared low like some prehistoric bird, Pam shuddered; Martha did not move.’
The Cyrillic Alphabet
Adam Thirlwell
‘Olga was noble. She was Amazonian. She felt exhausted and humiliated, but she also had force.’
Used to be Great Friends
C.J. Driver
‘This is a photograph of a twenty-first birthday party in the late winter of 1962.’
Life at Tilty Mill
Christopher Barker
‘This was the wild bunch that peopled my childhood nightmares.’
Orange People
Tim Guest
‘Never in history had so much orange gathered together to say 'Beloved' so often.’
On the Roof
Geoff Dyer
‘Destiny, I think, is not what lies in store for you; it's what is already stored up inside you—and it's as patient as death.’
The Siege of Mazar-i-Sharif
Luke Harding
‘We didn't know it then, but this was the end of the Taliban—their final surrender after what had been (though, again, those of us who witnessed it had no way knowing this at the time) the most significant struggle of the short war in Afghanistan. Was this final struggle intended? Was the slaughter inevitable? Or was it, as many armed conflicts must be, a long series of mistakes born out of vengefulness, ignorance and fear?’
Another Age
Helon Habila
‘This snapshot of us in the foyer of the MuSoN Hall has come to symbolize a lot of things to me. Our smiles seem to say that the worst for our country is over, we are gazing beyond the camera into a new and brighter future, where we could be poets without fear of arrest, murder or exile. We had cheques worth 50,000 naira and 20,000 naira in our pockets. But above all the picture is a confirmation of my deepest dream, that of becoming a writer.’
