Sisters

Sisters

The house burbles around us. The water chokes out of the tap. She doesn’t catch our eyes. She washes and then passes things to me and I dry them and then give them to September to put in the cupboard. I want to tell Mum how we’re sorry, really sorry, about what...
Satin Island

Satin Island

2.4 The ventilation system. This deserves a book all of its own. It was cavernous and booming. The air-handling unit was housed in the basement with me — a series of grey boxes joined to one another like parts of a mechanical elephant, a sheet-metal supply-duct...
Piranesi

Piranesi

Laurence Arne-Sayles began with the idea that the Ancients had a different way of relating to the world, that they experienced it as something that interacted with them. When they observed the world, the world observed them back. If, for example, they travelled in a...
In The Heart of the Heart of the Country

In The Heart of the Heart of the Country

A PLACE So I have sailed the seas and come… to B…a small town fastened to a field in Indiana. Twice there have been twelve hundred people here to answer to the census. The town is outstandingly neat and shady, and always puts its best side to the highway. On one lawn...
The Humans

The Humans

I may need more time. You do not need time. I am going to kill who I need to kill, don’t worry about that. We are not worried. But I am not just here to destroy information. I am here to gather it. That is what you said, wasn’t it? Stuff on mathematical understanding...