Some days on his walk Harold Keehn thought about his wives. Some days it was caskets. Others it was the heartbreaking beauty of the natural world such as he had come to know it. Often as not the consolidation of these topics was seamless and the names and particulars would race through his brain lik…
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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.
‘Fifty years I’ve played here, except for stretches in Arizona and Mississippi, after my divorce.’
Fiction by Kate Lister Campbell.
‘Postures of graceful receptivity, or surrender. How do we tell the difference?’
A.K. Blakemore introduces Suzie Howell’s photographs.
‘She could not make me see my best qualities, but she could sit with me.’
Joanna Biggs on literary friendships between women.
‘I want the reader to be conscious of reading and not being just drawn into the book and forgetting themselves and forgetting their life.’
Claire-Louise Bennett on her novel Checkout 19.
‘I knew that Dominic had cheated on me. I couldn’t tell you when, or who, or how many times, but I was certain that he had.’
Fiction by Eleanor Catton.
‘If I had known she were heading for Tokyo then, and if I had known she thought of Tokyo as a city of zombies, I would have wanted to know, of course, whether she saw me that way, too.’
