In Susan Hill’s A Change for the Better Deirdre Fount finds herself traversing a path that is not the one she intended to venture down. Though she might have stumbled upon it of her own accord, her marathon trek along it is due to a mix of personal inertia and the pressures and expectations of others around her. This is how I’ve been feeling about...

I picked up Susan Hill’s A Change for the Better from the shelves of the Little Library, a literary free-for-all thanks to which I’ve stumbled across all manner of elderly, fusty little books. The sorts of books that are faded to a jaundiced hue, their pages seeking respite from the glue of their bindings, their text cramped and tiny, set, in...

Today’s guest post, on balancing writing and family, is by Kate Belle   How do you juggle your family with writing? It’s a common enough question (although interestingly more often directed at female than male authors). Creativity, like the human beings it’s borne in, is complex, flexible and responsive. For those juggling a family, work,...

I purchased Lydia Millet’s My Happy Life some years ago on the strength of her book Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which I remember being a tremendous read. I wonder now whether I’d feel the same way upon embarking on a re-read, as I’m deeply ambivalent about My Happy Life, a book that’s so painfully, mawkishly self-conscious that...

  Venice is the only place in Italy I’ve been to–unless the countryside scudding along outside the train window counts–and it’s a city that straddles so many realities. With a foot on land and one in the ocean, it’s physically an in-between city; with its car-less streets and ancient architecture, it’s a place that...

Local romance author Sandra Antonelli and I have been in touch over Twitter and through the site for a while now, but first properly connected over an interview I did late last year with author Maggie Dana about middle-aged protagonists and their representation in fiction. This is, as it turns out, Sandra’s area of expertise, and is something that she...

Six years ago I was out at a bar with a girlfriend. I was there under the guise of being her lesbian partner, a roadblock against the advances of another girl my friend had unwittingly led on. Unfortunately I didn’t play my role especially well, as I couldn’t help but take notice of a handsome young man who’d just entered the venue. To make...

  Earlier this morning I read that the term “friend zone” is set to enter the OED. It’s a term that I stumbled over only relatively recently, probably within the last few months or so, and it’s only after spending some time thinking about and reading up on it this morning that I managed to pinpoint exactly what about it bothered...