If the stories in 2008’s   Mammoth Book of SF 21 were particularly concerned with death, annihilation and endings, the overarching theme in this collection from 1992 seems to be a questioning of the relationship between concepts of nature and normality.  Some of the best stories collected here look at the ways in which nature, as a concept, is ( Read more... )

The novel is set in Cornwall in the 1820s. Our orphaned heroine, Mary Yellen, goes to live with her mother’s sister Patience at the isolated Jamaica Inn. To her alarm, she finds her aunt a shadow of her former self, utterly dominated by her brutal husband, Joss Merlyn.  Worse is to come when Mary realises there are wicked doings afoot at the Inn, ( Read more... )

We regard each other ( Read more... )

Ever since I finished reading the stories in this collection, I’ve been trying to articulate the effect they’ve had on me. It’s easy enough to appreciate Shirley Jackson as a superb writer who had absolute control of her material, but when it comes to discussing the content of the stories, I find myself struggling because they seem to say so much ( Read more... )

Ah, Love, you smell of petroleum
and overwork
with grease on your fingernails,
paint in your hair
there is a pained look in your eye
from no appreciation
you speak to me of the lilacs
and appleblossoms we ought to have
the banquets we should be serving,
afterwards rubbing each other for hours
with tenderness and genuine
olive oil
someday.  Meantime here ( Read more... )

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun, 
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet 
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

Denise Levertov

This entry was originally posted ( Read more... )

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.
If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.
And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?
*
I wanted the past to ( Read more... )

"When feminism exploded into my life, it gave me a vision of the world totally different from everything I had assumed or hoped. The concept of a feminist literature offered the possibility of pride in my sexuality. It saved me from either giving up writing entirely, or the worse prospect of writing lies in order to achieve some measure of grudging ( Read more... )

My head is wet
My head is wet

Something
Something
I forget

I did not want to wash my hair

Something terrible
unbearable
or maybe not

Sometimes babies are born dead

It doesn't matter
in the water
what I wanted or forgot

Sinister little poem from Le Guin which I saw posted on greatpoets lj.

This entry was originally posted at Read more... )

"For God’s sake come to me quickly. She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment".

"It is a razor blade of a novel: the blade is carefully hidden, but it is there inside the packaging, and, fifty years later, its capacity to draw blood remains unaltered", Sally Beauman, ‘Introduction’, p. vi.

Phillip Ashley has been raised by his wealthy, ( Read more... )