The Goldfinch
That night, at Boris’ — lying drunk on my half of the batik-draped mattress — I tried to remember what Pippa had looked like. But the moon was so large and clear through the uncurtained window that it made me think instead of a story my mother had told me, about...
Pale Fire
The following note is not an apology of suicide – it is the simple and sober description of a spiritual situation. The more lucid and overwhelming one’s belief in Providence, the greater the temptation to get it over with, this business of life, but the greater too...
Heroes of the Frontier
“My kids should eat,” Josie said, hoping to focus herself and Sam on practical matters. “Doug’s on it,” Sam said, nodding toward a bonfire, which Josie realized was also the barbecue. This was a barbarian arrangement — a vast open fire being fed with giant logs, and...
The Surgeon Of Crowthorne
Lambeth belonged administratively, at least until 1888, to the county of Surrey – meaning that the relatively strict laws that applied to the capital’s citizens did not apply to anyone who ventured, via one of the new bridges like Waterloo, Blackfriars, Westminster or Hungerford, into the wen of Lambeth. The village thus became fast known as a site of revelry and abandon, a place where public houses and brothels and lewd theatres abounded, and where a man could find entertainment of all kinds – and disease of all varieties – for no more than a handful of pennies.