Night Thoughts by Helen Simpson was published in the latest issue of Granta (115) - The F(eminism) Word Issue. To read the story, you're going to have to buy the magazine, but in the mean time we have Ben Crystal's dramatic reading below, and there's a short film in response to the story online here: http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Night-Thoughts
Enjoy! :)
Helen Simpson is the author of five collections of short stories, the most recent of which is In-Flight Entertainment. Her previous books include Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories and Hey Yeah Right Get a Life.
Click the link above to listen to the MP3 of the reading by Clive Greenwood
So, Mr Franks thinks that his Lordship can’t manage to tie his own bow tie, does he? Well, Mr Franks is in for a surprise. Mr Franks is in for a big surprise. The fact is that Mr Franks has begun to make too many assumptions about his Lordship. This is the danger in keeping a gentleman’s gentleman for too long. He begins to forget who is the gentleman, and who is the gentleman’s gentleman. He begins to presume. He begins to suggest. He begins to ask impertinent questions. Fold back end A, and hold tight between the thumb and forefinger.
"Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley, and talked of Mrs. Darcy, may be guessed. Pemberley was now Georgiana's home; and Georgiana had the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth; though at first she often listened with an astonishment bordering on alarm at her lively, sportive, manner of talking to her brother –"
Nah, sorry. I can't keep it up. “Lively and sportive”? Bleeding fishwife, more like.
Marilyn felt like the type of woman whose husband was having an affair.
If he’s not having an affair, she thought, he should be. She closed the bedroom door and looked at the coat hooks hanging lop-sided on the back of the door. It meant she had to hang her robe outside the bedroom. It made her feel bad.
Theresa’s mother was quite clear about it. Look at Darwin, she’d said. Look at Karl Marx. Consider that man Rasputin, in Russia. Look at the Greek Socrates: he came to a bad end, sure enough.
Her father had agreed, gravely weighing in from his chair at the writing desk: ‘A man who wears a beard,’ he said, ‘is hiding something.’
Theresa had asked, once, why it was, then, that Jesus had a beard. Her mother had slapped her hard across the face. Jesus did not have a beard! she had screamed. Tell me where in the Bible it says that Jesus had a beard. You little harlot! she’d screamed.
Liar Katy Darby's debut novel, a Victorian drama called The Whores' Asylum, was published by Fig Tree (part of Penguin) in February 2012. It's had some nice reviews in The Independent on Sunday, the Sunday Times and Metro so far.
SAMMY WINS THIRD IN BRIDPORT 2011
Congratulations to LL author Sammy Wright who came third in the prestigious Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2011: he owes everything to Liars' League. Everything. Especially his first-born son ... More here
OUR INTERVIEW WITH ANNEXE MAGAZINE!
They came, they saw, they asked us a bunch of interesting questions. Interview by Nick of Annexe Mag with Katy of LL: here
