[Fiction] The lifelong impact of brief friendships. A woman meets three friends in college who have special gifts: Charles voice is controlled mortification. You fainted, he says. One of the girls holds my hand. You totally did, she agrees. Where are the birds? I say. They disappeared when you fainted, the other Earring Girl says. […]
fiction
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[Fiction] A home-schooled minotaur enters high school and learns to adjust: At the mall a lady offers me a free sample of zit cream and I’m about to be all sarcastic, like “Look, lady— I’ve got a giant bull’s head. No one’s going to notice a few zits.” But there’s something about the way she’s […]
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[Fiction] When one person loves the other just a little more: William was tall and thin and shy and awkward in school. His best social tool was that he played the piano, and so was recruited for school musicals, which placed him at rehearsals and cast parties with kids he would otherwise scarcely have known. […]
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[Fiction] A couple prepares for another predictable evening with old friends: Later, he came out of the bathroom just as the toilet was completing its roar. She was no longer in the kitchen. He took another cheese and cracker. He walked past the dressed table to the living room. She sat on the sofa reading […]
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[Fiction] A sisters’ weekend and an unexpected encounter bring back memories: When Trisha comes to town we have to go out. She’s the bitterest soccer mom of all time and as part of her escape from home she wants to get drunk and complain about her workaholic husband and over-scheduled, ungrateful children. No one appreciates […]
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Homecoming
[Fiction] An urban teen moves to Virginia and tries to stay out of trouble: When Marcus’s mother and her boyfriend and just about everybody they knew were put in jail for possession and conspiracy to distribute cocaine, Marcus went to live with his aunt for a while. Marcus was sixteen, a hurdler and sprinter on […]
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Homecoming
[Fiction] An urban teen moves to Virginia and tries to stay out of trouble: When Marcus’s mother and her boyfriend and just about everybody they knew were put in jail for possession and conspiracy to distribute cocaine, Marcus went to live with his aunt for a while. Marcus was sixteen, a hurdler and sprinter on […]
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The Bedford Quarry
[Fiction] A teenage boy falls into criminal life: It was the first summer Jack and Mom didn’t care when I came home. Finding things missing around the house, Jack had said something about his wallet springing a leak, and it better fix itself fast. I was a much better liar than Betsy, and had perfected […]
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The Bedford Quarry
[Fiction] A teenage boy falls into criminal life: It was the first summer Jack and Mom didn’t care when I came home. Finding things missing around the house, Jack had said something about his wallet springing a leak, and it better fix itself fast. I was a much better liar than Betsy, and had perfected […]
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[Fiction] Excerpt from McEwan’s forthcoming novel Sweet Tooth. A young woman is introduced to the man who would recruit her to MI5: My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with ‘plume’), and forty years ago, in my final year at Cambridge, I was recruited by the British security service. In the early spring of 1972, when […]