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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.’
Soft Core
Joyce Carol Oates
‘They were two sisters of youthful middle age with three breasts between them and a history that might be summed up as much left unsaid.’
Fiction by Joyce Carol Oates.
Scouting for Boys
Paul Theroux
‘Three figures came single file over a wooded hill of the Fells carrying their rifles one-handed and keeping their heads low. They were duckwalking, hunched like Indian trackers, with the same stealth in their footfall, toeing the mushy earth of early spring. I was one of them, the last, being careful, watching for the stranger, his black hat, his blue Studebaker. Walter Herkis and Chicky DePalma were the others. When we got to the clearing where the light slanted through the bare trees and into our squinting faces you could see we were twelve years old.’
