And now I live in England, where I am annoyed by people who litter!!
Sedaris has been headed this way for a little while now. So - I wasn't going to make this announcement just yet, but I guess I might as well - I suppose I should let you know that I am the new David Sedaris, starting next week. Who wants a story about my eccentric family? I'm gay
Surprised to read that The Witches is a "diatribe against female conformity"! It's... just... it's just plain misogyny? He hates women
9yo: "Caspar, it's sad that I'm turning 10... from next year, I could be sent to prison if I set fire to a building on purpose"
Lol are you serious
Lucky you!
Last but not least, I cherish the Oxford book of English Short Stories that she edited, which leaps and dashes all over place, with some wonderful, idiosyncratic picks, including a horribly grisly one by Mary Mann and an absolutely fucking screamingly hilarious P.G. Wodehouse story.
I also recommend Angels & Insects, a rather weird and perverse set of novellas, and from her Frederica quartet (which I haven't completed) I had a ball with Babel Tower and its quite grotesque pastiche. Recently I read her introduction to Iris Murdoch's The Bell and it was *stonkingly* good.
A. S. Byatt was a brilliant writer, all too often forgotten these days because her style of writing - big, deeply intellectual books that don't set out to charm the reader with easy levity or irony - is not fashionable. I adore Possession, a book I absolutely ate up as a teenager.
Just remembered a time when my French teacher read us a recipe as a dictation, and these two kids who were twins both scored badly at it and she told them off for not helping their mum out in the kitchen enough (?)