More than most artists, each of Fiona Apple’s albums seems to exist on its own. Partly it’s that a gap of years separates each one, so that it inhabits its own niche in time; partly it’s that Apple finds a different approach each time. The elegant...
The protagonist and the woman get to spend some time alone in this fourth chapter. 4. I expected her gaze to be lowered, expectant or fearful, but when I turned towards the woman I saw her eyes fixed on me, with a fiery expression of reproach. She opened her lips to...
This third chapter of Levrero’s novel only carries the protagonist further away from where he wants to be. (Chapters one and two are here and here.) 3. When I opened my eyes I realised that the sun had already risen. I observed my travelling companions. The...
This is my translation of the first two chapters of Mario Levrero’s novel The City. The protagonist lives in a perverse universe where nothing he does produces the outcome he expects and his choices keep leading him further and further from home. By his own...
These are the movies that have stayed with me most over the last decade. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) Terrence Malick captures the way we actually remember childhood – not in coherent episodes but in intensely apprehended moments, like Jessica Chastain...
Hustlers (2019) – This is a textbook example of how a female point of view can transform even very familiar stories. The narrative strategies that writer and director Lorene Scafaria employs – the story’s events recounted to a journalist in flashbacks, the old...
