Married love
Lottie is nineteen, a musician, and has fallen in love with a great man. What could be simpler?
Tag: Short stories
The mind creates ghosts
Patrick McGrath's new novel isn't his best. But it's another example of his extraordinary talent for dissecting our inner lives, and for blurring the fine line between sanity and sickness
The starving millions
Nick's brother is a saint. And Nick can't help hating him for it
Impostor
When Adam's life fell apart, he turned to his brother for help. But charity can be hard to swallow
Franco-British Council Story Prize 2
This month saw the inaugural Prospect/Franco-British Council prize for a short story of under 1,000 words inspired by France. The top three entries in the sixth-form category are below
Franco-British Council Story Prize 1
This month saw the inaugural Prospect/Franco-British Council prize for a short story of under 1,000 words inspired by France. The top four entries in the undergraduate category are below
Writing the election
The best coverage of American politics is to be found not in the country's newspapers, but in its books
England’s history boy
Melvyn Bragg's celebrity means that his novels are not usually taken seriously by critics. But his widely read sagas of family and place, depicting a vanishing England, make him one of the most important national novelists we have
Living on
Francis is married to Judith, but the woman he really loves is Anne. The trouble is, Anne is dead
Writing the nation
The "state of the nation" novel is back in fashion, with recent examples from Hanif Kureishi, Sebastian Faulks and Louis de Bernières. But many of these books focus too closely on "authentic" period detail at the expense of convincing characters…
Between the lines
Blurbs and trailers used to tease, not spoil. But these days they ruin things by telling you exactly what you are going to read or watch. We need a campaign for real blurbs
Man in the water
I'd be completely lost without my Jenny. Has Josiah Green the lighthouse-keeper been courting her?
What you want
I have mad thoughts while I'm cleaning. What if I were to be visited by the devil?
The half-baked entrepreneur
Dear Premier Wen, allow me—a servant, philosopher and successful businessman—to offer you the truth about Bangalore, free of charge
The wink
In the old people's home, Jean saw him again. This time, she knew what to do
The genre divide
Despite the latest efforts of John Banville, the gulf between genre and literary fiction remains wide
The third Mr Glasgow
Drunk, spurned and locked out of his flat, Mr MacBleaney consoles himself by remembering former glories
Birdwing
Butterflies offered Arno the passion missing from his marriage. But where, exactly, would his hobby take him?
Cuckoo
Alice was half my age but twice as intelligent as me. She was an enigma threatening to dissolve my marriage.
Infested
She knew it would take something special to win Best Pest. When she saw the dog, she knew she'd found it