Search Results

“... Oh, it’s not so bad,’ Melissa Green’s mother says to her nonchalantly on the subject of having babies. ‘The doctors will be there and they’ll put you to sleep. I almost miscarried with you. The doctor wanted me to stay in bed, but I didn’t and you were born just the same.’ Melissa, on the verge of puberty, baffled by and anxious about certain bodily changes, is neither greatly enlightened nor particularly reassured by this information, but her mother, in the time-honoured patchwork mode of ellipses, imprecision and embarrassment, barrels on regardless with the lecture on birds and bees ...”

“... hundred feet. Oh, shit, there goes the Parcheesi board and what’s left of a very bold Shiraz. Melissa purses her lips in the compact mirror, turns a quarter left, then right a tad, scowls at her mascara and snaps it shut with a sigh. You are the pre-eminent colourist of your era. Some would suggest a fraud with your grand chevelure of white hair and ...”

“... on her way to the football match has an almost painting-by-numbers sparseness: ‘black cattle, green meadows, white houses with brown roof tiles’. Evocations of atmosphere can be much richer and more complex, to the point of expressionism, but are no more indulgent in terms of the space allotted them: ‘Back outside the café now, the sunlight is so ...”

“... are bent out of shape by their hidden selves. There is something of another contemporary, Henry Green, in Johnson’s invigorating harshness. As Elsie passes on her way to school, Parsons ‘gave her a sidelong glance, sniffing up the hairs in his nose. Sidey little runt, he thought.’ Elsie, abruptly adolescent, is in love with her art teacher, Miss ...”

“... confessed a wish to be a singer-songwriter. The boys would cruise around northern Delaware in the green 1972 Caprice Classic convertible their father bought them. Beau’s one youthful flaw was a lack of punctuality. Like his father, he was teetotal, except for a bit of social drinking in his twenties. Hunter was busted for possession of cocaine on the ...”

“... until recently, in French translation.*She was sitting on the floor, naked, in a skitter of green bills … scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-coloured hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never ...”

“... to write the formula on the board?’ the teacher asked one Year 7 class. A dozen hands shot up.‘Melissa,’ the teacher said, holding out a pen to a girl sitting at the back table.‘Sir!’ shouted Abdul, the boy next to her. ‘How am I getting violated like that? You always pick girls!’Chatter sparked up instantly at the other ...”

“... a novel anyway. It’s more like a set of short stories being marketed as a novel, in the way that Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing was last year. Except that it isn’t even a set of short stories. It’s more like a bundle of bits and pieces, nicely laid out, signed, numbered and bound in home-splodged cardboard and sold as an ...”