The unexceptional mystery takes place:
around eleven, love turns to matter, Dad
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The unexceptional mystery takes place:
around eleven, love turns to matter, Dad
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
Sam Willetts was born in 1962. He has worked as a teacher, journalist and travel writer. His first poetry collection, New Light for the Old Dark, was published in 2010.
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‘How can I accept a trauma or a loss that I cannot define?’
Rebecca May Johnson on pregnancy and divining the future.
‘The past is no longer behind me but in front.’
An extract from About Ed by Robert Glück.
‘I won her with my grief first / a mess of steaming entrails, enticing / with its gloss.’
Two poems by Madeleine Stack.
‘He is an ancestor, he has had his son, he has lost possession of the world.’
Fiction by Allen Bratton.
‘I wish I could step inside this memory and steady myself, put a cool reassuring hand on my own and convince myself to wait.’
An excerpt from Megan Nolan’s Acts of Desperation, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writers Award.
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