Oasis

The opening line hooks one instantly: "That spring when life was hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn't see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations." She writes about depression, without naming it, in a blackly funny way. She describes directionlessness yet knows where she is going: the essay is immaculately planned. There are many wonderful lines: "When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense." Or: "A female writer cannot afford to feel her life too clearly. If she does, she will write in a rage when she should write calmly." Even the coat hangers in an irregular Mallorcan hotel are perfectly described: "four bent wire clothes hangers on the rail, they seemed to mimic the shape of forlorn human shoulders". … [Read more...] about Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy – review

"It was like two big wheels [which] met - one was the old Ethiopian Jews' dream to go back to Jerusalem, and the other one was the Israeli Jews that came to help them fulfil this - it was the fusion of wheels that was the strength of this operation - that is why nobody ever gave up." … [Read more...] about Red Sea Diving Resort: The holiday village run by spies