From a Low and Quiet Sea
Donal Ryan
"Let me tell you something about trees. They speak to each other. Just think what they must say. What could a tree have to say to a tree?"
Home Archive by category Excerpts (Page 83)
Excerpts
City of Crows
Chris Womersley
"That night, when everyone was asleep, Charlotte could bear it no longer. She slipped from beneath her thin blanket and sat up for a moment to orient herself in the gloom."
Early Work
Andrew Martin
"When Leslie was twenty-five, she lived in New York and, for longer than she should have, dated Todd."
Lala
Jacek Dehnel, Trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones
"The house in Oliwa already looks different now. And when Granny dies—which will be soon, and I can write that with a tranquil mind, firstly because we’ve long since come to terms with the idea, and secondly she’s never going to read this anyway because she doesn’t read any more—the whole place will change out of all recognition."
Nevada Days
Bernardo Atxaga, Trans. Margaret Jull Costa
"Reno is always silent, even during the day. The casinos are airtight edifices, carpeted inside, and no noise spreads beyond the rooms where the slot machines and the gaming tables stand in serried ranks."
Suicide Club
Rachel Heng
"The cake was a huge, tiered thing, painted with butter cream and decked with tiny red flowers, floating on a glass pedestal in the middle of the crowded room."
The Family Tabor
Cherise Wolas
"Tomorrow evening, Harry Tabor will be anointed Man of the Decade. If this were the 1300s, he would be running for his life to escape savage pogroms in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, or Bohemia."
Small Country
Gaël Faye (trans. Sarah Ardizzone)
"It was a typical morning. The cockerel was crowing. The dog was scratching behind his ear. The aroma of coffee wafted through the house. The parrot mimicked Papa’s voice. We could hear the sound of a broom scraping the ground in next-door’s yard, and the strains of a radio blaring somewhere in the neighbourhood."
The Iconoclast’s Journal
Terry Griggs
"In the month of May, 1898, on his wedding night, Thomas Griffith Smolders was chased around his hotel room, not by his bride, as you might expect, but by a ball of fire—luminous and strangely cool."
The Shepherd’s Hut
Tim Winton
"When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth grey rumble going under me everything’s hell different. Like I’m in a fresh new world all slick and flat and easy."
The Hospital
Ahmed Bouanani, Trans. by Lara Vergnaud
"When I walked through the large iron gate of the hospital, I must have still been alive."
The Dependents
Katharine Dion
"His wife had died in June and there was to be a memorial service for her in two weeks, at the end of the summer."
Brother in Ice
Alicia Kopf, Trans. by Mara Faye Lethem
"First it was the tabular icebergs, which appeared floating in the local pool. Narwhals got in through a crack in the tiles at the bottom."
Confessions of the Fox
Jordy Rosenberg
"Some time ago—never mind how long precisely—I slipped off the map of the world. I took the manuscript with me."
The Traitor’s Niche
Ismail Kadare, Trans. by John Hodgson
"The unblinking eyes met the stares of the passersby and tourists who poured into the square from all directions."
“Across the Street”
Lee Martin
"The idea was to let their adult son live on his own. After years of group homes and institutions and finally time spend in their care, his parents—he an inventor, and she a dour, nervous woman—purchased a two-story house on Bay Meadows Court and helped their son move into a subdivision just inside the outer belt with its constant noise of traffic."
History of Violence
Édouard Louis, Trans. by Michael Lucey
"On days when I felt calmer I would imagine myself picking out someone I didn’t know in some public place, on the sidewalk or in the aisle of a supermarket, and telling them my whole story, everything that had happened."
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