Lanny

by Max Porter

This is what commuting is. Small pleasures coaxed from playing the routine like a game. Little tricks of the part-time countryman. It might be soul-destroying. I might be a bit pitiful. I don’t know.

His bean-plant grace has been replaced by gangling discomfort and the thought flits past me that he is simply growing up, shedding his fairy skin.

Her life insurance policy is probably more expensive due to the dangerous proximity of creativity to her neat detached house with underfloor heating and wipe-clean walls.

I can usually see a way to understand terrible things; Satanic worship, decaffeinated coffee, cosmetic surgery, but Renoir’s portrait of Madame de Bonnières? No. It cannot be understood or forgiven. And framed in gold plastic and spot-lit from above? No offence intended, Charlotte, there is not a chamber of hell hot enough for a woman of your taste.