There’s a thin dividing line between being loyal to your parents and exorcising the demons they cause in your life. I tried to exorcise those demons by writing a novel, Infinite Stranger, about the very close yet complex relationship between a mother and daughter, and the unattainable man who came between them. More specifically, it [...]
It all started the day my mother received a letter from the Town Council, denying her application for an extension to our living room. She was gutted. All her dreams of that longed-for extension, which would have added a good eight feet to our poky back living room, had gone to dust. My heart cried [...]
When I was a teenager, the wealth of stories my mother raised me on began to resonate more deeply. All of them — memories of her youth — were exciting, romantic, and drenched in settings that cried out to be immortalised by literature or cinema. By then, I was already writing humble novellas, short stories [...]
It’s Good Friday today. That might or might not mean anything to you. To be honest, it’s never meant much to me — despite my many attempts over the years to feel the solemnity of the day. But today, it does mean something. Today, the weight and permanence of death — and the hope of [...]
I don’t know if my brother liked Pink Floyd, but in many ways, he was a crazy diamond. There was a lot I didn’t know about him. My half-brother, to be correct. I didn’t even know he existed until I was eighteen, when my father told me about the son he'd had to a previous [...]
Here’s a poignant little poem from long ago, appropriate for today’s theme of love. The Lovers’ Dream To smile upon the moonlight streamAnd laugh and love was their only dream.To gaze contently and happ'ly sigh,No need to fret, to fear or sigh;Just to feel the night’s soft kissThat together wrapped their hearts in bliss,No need [...]
I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling deep waves of nostalgia whenever New Year’s Eve swings round yet again. Inevitably, I turn to my old diaries, digging them out of the wooden chest in my bedroom. And as I browse through the time-worn pages, I sink into a world gone by: timeless memories that are [...]
Wendy Skorupski 