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分类:小说

 

 

MAGIC SEEDS

by VS Naipaul

神奇种子

稿

 

缺图

内容简介

MAGIC SEEDS是作者上一篇小说〈浮生〉(Half a life)的续篇。

Willie Chandra18 年自我流放式生活后,离开非洲回到德国与妹妹一家住在一起。但不久,Willie就置身于印度与共产党游击队的战斗中,他一直自问什么是他应该做的

Willie Wandra身上,V.S.Naipaul塑造了一个十分现代的男主人公:渺茫无望地追寻着自身生命意义的根由,却只瞥见它存在于思想意识遥不可及处。

 

     

作者简介

V.S.Naipaul:奈波尔,2001年诺贝尔文学奖得主,是当今世界上最受推崇的英语作家之一,《纽约时报》书评称他是“世界作家、语言大师、眼光独到的小说奇才。”

。他曾获得短篇小说重要大奖「毛姆小说奖」及英国最具声望的「布克文学奖」。

重要作品有 HALF A LIFE (浮生)、In a Free State (自由国度)、A WAY in the World (世间之路)等

 

分类:惊悚小说 / 法语

 

 

Balagan

by  Alexandra Schwartzbrod

2003出版,260

吕光东博士(Dr. Luc Kwanten) 全力推荐

 

 

 

内容简介

第二次起义开始的几个月,发生两次特别大规模死伤流血冲突,首次袭击犹太人定居点,很快再次袭击处在耶路撒冷老城的阿拉伯人定居点。

兰道警官接下了这个案子。他以对与恐怖分子相关的犯罪案件调查缜密而名声在外。另一名警官艾里·比沙拉也赶到犯罪现场,他对这个案件也非常有兴趣。比沙拉是阿拉伯以色列混血儿,他的性格及做事方式与兰道截然不同。起义开始以来,比沙拉被派在黄赌毒纠察大队,正努力查找一名在约旦河流域失踪的以色列妇女。

从特拉维的赌场到 内盖夫沙漠城市别是巴贝都因人的市场;从俄罗斯黑手党手下成员到定居希伯伦的居民;从拉马拉到伯利恒,调查人员发现的所有蛛丝马迹都指向耶路撒冷老城的袭击活动。

 

耶路撒冷,这个上帝与魔鬼同在的城市,是小说里当前以色列与巴勒斯坦紧张局势的背景。

 

《混乱》不是政治书,它只是一本惊悚小说。

 

 

     

作者简介

作者在2002年12月以前是法国解放日报驻耶路撒冷记者。这是她写的第二本小说。

 

 

分类:文集

You are not a stranger here

by Adam Haslett

在这儿,你不是陌生人

0390.00,精装,32开,共240,ISBN:0385509529

 

内容简介

 

 

 

 

 

这是美国文坛新手Adam Haslett的处女作,出版后立刻成为畅销书,是普利策奖、美国国家图书奖夺标热门作品美国有不少媒体介绍了这部短篇故事集。Zoetrope杂志选了“Notes to My Biographer”, BOMB杂志和The Alembic分别收录了“War’s End” “Reunion”“Devotion”被选进The Yale Review . 该书还在纽约时报 NEW YORK TIMES,出版人周刊( PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, 华尔街日报(THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 今日美国(USA TODAY)畅销书榜中处于重要位置。

 

 

目录

NOTES TO MY BIOGRAPHER

THE GOOD DOCTOR

THE BEGINNINGS OF GRIEF

DEVOTION

WAR’S END

REUNION

DIVINATION

MY FATHER’S BUSINESS

THE VOLUNTEER

 

 

一、该书获奖情况:

 

入围2003年普利策文学奖终选名单,

L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award*

2002 纽约杂志纽约小说奖

进入2002 美国国家图书奖决选。 

 

* L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award:每年评选一次,奖金3000美金。颁奖对象为 新英格兰作家或以写新英格兰为主题的诗歌、小说类、非小说类美国公民。)

 

二、世界范围版权销售情况:(15家)

 

意大利: Einaudi

德国:Goldmann

英国: Cape

西班牙:Salamandra

加泰罗尼亚语:Columna

法国:Editions L'Olivier

瑞典:Forum

荷兰: Atlas

日本: Shinchosha

葡萄牙:Teorema

挪威: Cappelen

希腊: Oceanida

俄罗斯: Eksmo

丹麦:Forlaget Athene

塞尔维亚:Dejadora

 

网文推荐----

真实与隐晦 ( 郭强生 文 )

 

 开学第一堂小说创作课,我选了一篇在美国刚刚崭露头角的新人亚当海斯勒(Adam Haslett)的作品。他的第一本短篇小说集《你不再是异乡客》(You Are Not A Stranger Here)去年一出版便好评如潮,在几个重要文学奖中,都蒙获决选青睐,更有趣的是这样一本精致细腻但没有话题可言的纯文学作品竟然成为美国NBC电视网「今天」这个高收视率新闻访谈节目之每月一书。海斯勒在爱荷华大学创作研究所毕业后便申请进入了耶鲁大学的法律研究所,看来他是万万没料到弃文从法的这本纪念作竟会如此轰动。海斯勒的下一本书将会在我密切关注并期待的名单中。

  而我选用他小说集中的这篇〈悼之始〉(The Beginning of Grief)与班上同学分享有我的用意。才华洋溢的年轻创作者最常被诟病的也许就是视野不够宽宏。视野是否一定要涉及历史家国才能写出有深度的作品,这点我其实是存疑的。但是初生之犊的这点「自知之明」有时反而成为创作上的包袱,纷纷开始在题材上下功夫,以求出奇制胜。社会乱象、精神病态、异质次文化……都成了显而易见的招数。但是文学题材何匮乏之有?其实就是人性二字,不患寡而患不真。谁说初恋的题材就一定不及情杀更具震撼力?近年来的小说是否愈来愈有偏向抽离而非拥抱投入角色的人性刻画?

  或许更精确一点地说,人性变得愈来愈概念化?我们有了比十九世纪作家们更高的自觉,拜信息之赐,更多的语汇帮助我们做思想上的分类。我们都知道了性别与性向之分、历史与记忆何以纠结、压抑与情欲、书写与身体、主体与意识形态……这一连串思考如何相衍排列,但是我们似乎却渐渐缺乏了十九世纪作家们的他觉或同理心。我们彷佛都能理解为什么人性会有这么多面向,但却愈来愈少在文学作品中真正感同身受一场遭遇,阅读小说不再是经验人性,而是在搜集人性。我们陈列出种种形态如标本般加以注释说明,却感受不到他们成为标本前被捕杀、被囚困的颤动。

  海斯勒的小说能获得如此大的回响,我想就在于他观点的专注,把看似平常,或已在概念前导下成为化石标本的角色情感重新还原。什么是悲伤?什么是爱恋?在他的小说中从不假情绪的形容词,却总能在角色的动作、时空的对比、对象的象征中让读者进入故事的核心。人性是有质感的、小说原来可以同时扑朔迷离却又一语道破。全书总名为《你不再是异乡客》在掩卷之时更教人觉得饶有余味。

  在下课前有同学问我:「老师,你第一次读这篇小说时就看到这么多东西吗?」我以微笑点头作答。是作者的表达力清晰透彻,而非我有什么特殊训练所致。但是我同时又有点儿担心,海斯勒的洞察人性,对长期受影象化、概念化阅读影响的年轻一代,是不是反而变得抽象隐晦了呢? 

 

From: 自由时报 电子新闻网

    

作者简介

 

 

  

Adam Haslett斯沃斯莫尔学院Swarthmore College )毕业。他的作品刊登在Zoetrope, The Yale Review, BOMB杂志,美国国家公共电台故事选播栏目也播过他的作品。作者曾入围美国国家杂志奖的决赛,获得普林斯顿Fine Arts Work Center Michener/Copernicus Society of America奖学金。现是耶鲁大学法学院学生。

 

 

Easter Island

by Jennifer Vanderbes

复活节岛

0873.00304

分类:文学 / 探险小说

内容简介

 

小说中处在不同时代的两个女人在复活节岛上经历神秘奇遇的故事。其中压抑的情感与忠贞的矛盾冲突推动着整篇小说向前发展。

 

1912年,Elsa Pendleton的父亲去世,给Elsa留下19岁的妹妹需要照料。Elsa妹妹是个花瓶人物。22岁的Elsa为维持生计,嫁给了Edward Beazley。Edward Beazley与Elsa的父亲同辈,是英国皇家地理学会的人类学家。他们旅行去复活节岛,Edward计划在那里研究巨型“毛以斯”雕像。Elsa也完全陶醉在这种原始文化之中。

 

Elsa在处理有关她丈夫与妹妹的丑闻期间,与当地人成了朋友。她发现了一些带奇怪符号的木片,开始全身心地投入到揭开这些秘密的研究工作中去。 

 

花开两朵,各表一枝。Greer Farraday是一个年轻的植物学家,刚从与比他大的某教授的灾难婚姻中摆脱出来。他在1913年来到岛上,准备寻找岛上缺少天然树木的神秘原因。在岛上,与Greer一起的研究者中有一个叫 Vicente Portales的,他是一个密码破译专家,试图解读出“朗戈朗戈”文字(rongorongo )

 

Elsa 与Greer的故事交替进行着,又开始有第3个故事卷了进来---Graf Von Spee的故事,Graf Von Spee是德国的一个海军少将,他率领着一支舰队横渡南太平洋,但运气不佳……

 

Elsa 与Greer见面的场景是小说的高潮部分。如同复活节岛上的阴霾的天空,小说充满淡淡的忧郁气息,书内有相当多的气象和科学知识,以及丰富的思想情感描写。

 

小说以多种研究为基础:如古植物学与植物的分布;语言与复活节岛的生态、神秘雕像,以及“一战”海军历史,它是一本讲述探险、讲述灭绝的小说。

     

作者简介

暂缺

 

分类:小说

MOSAIC

(formerly VANISHED

by Khashoggi, Soheir

万花筒 (原名:消失)

( 尚未脱稿 )

 

MOSAIC暂缺封面

 

内容简介

--- 与瑟赫尔的前两本作品 (《 娜迪亚之歌》与《海市蜃楼》)一样,作者以商场女性故事为媒介,试图让西方读者了解穆斯林妇女的生活。

新书《万花筒》发生背景主要在纽约。主角迪娜是个美国人,与约旦一位事业有成的商人结婚,有三个孩子---一个10多岁男孩和一对6岁的双胞胎。她十多岁的儿子不久被发现是同性恋。面对如此令人震惊的消息,她那信仰穆斯林的丈夫将此归咎于她以及她的西式生活方式。

故事开头是:迪娜下班回来,发现房子里空无一人,丈夫留字条给她称:他带双生子回约旦了,以免他们受美国影响,那已经把他们的大儿子给毁了。

这是展现迪娜誓死努力要回孩子的故事。此外,《万花筒》也是描写激烈的文化冲突和坚强女性的友谊观。与众不同而且令人关注的是书中没有人物的对错,因为迪娜的丈夫相信:让孩子远离不良影响是正确的事情。

 

版权销售情况:

英国:环球出版公司 ( Transworld );

西班牙语:普拉萨哈内斯出版社 ( Plaza Y Janes )

 

     

其他作品销售情况

 

娜迪亚之歌 ( NADIA’S SONG)

版权销售情况:

英国:环球出版公司 ( Transworld )

西班牙:普拉萨哈内斯出版社 ( Plaza Y Janes )

拉美:大西洋出版社 ( Atlantida)

荷兰:德波克出版社(De Boekerij

保加利亚:巴德出版社 ( Bard)

日本: Take Shobo出版社( Take Shobo)

匈牙利:麦格考尼库出版社(Magyar Konyvklub

希腊:利瓦尼出版社(Livani)

 

海市蜃楼( MIRAGE)

版权销售情况:

保加利亚:克劳那斯出版社 ( Kronos )

英国:环球出版公司 ( Transworld )

挪威:Aventura出版社 ( Aventura)

芬兰: 基莫路斯出版社( Gummerus)

瑞典: 瑞切斯特出版社(Richters)

俄罗斯:卡热尼莱德出版社(Karetniy Ryad)

希腊:里瓦尼出版社(Livani)

意大利:斯铂灵出版社( Sperling)

日本:Take Shobo出版社;

波兰:Zysk 出版社(Zysk)

西班牙:普拉萨哈内斯出版社 ( Plaza Y Janes )

拉美 大西洋出版社 ( Atlantida)

德国:海涅出版公司( Heyne )

法国:贝尔丰出版社( Belfond )

 

分类:

 

A WALK ON THE BEACH: Tales of Wisdom from an Uncoventional Woman ( Formerly titled WHEN THE PUPIL IS READY)

by Joan Anderson

海滩漫步:一位反传统女性的智慧故事 (原名:学生做好准备时

 

2004出版,精装,256 页, ISBN: 0767914740

 

A walk on the beach 封面暂缺

 

 

内容简介

--- 当琼·爱历克森(分析家爱历克的妻子)认识琼·安德森时,爱历克森90多岁,安德森刚50多岁,正过着流浪生活,迫切需要一位值得信赖的良师益友。爱历克森严厉风趣、不墨守成规,正是安德森在困苦时期需求的人生导师。此书带有自传性质,部分是表达敬意,部分是关于人至中年困顿期的帮助主题。

 

版权销售情况:

美国:百老汇图书出版社 ( BROADWAY BOOKS )

澳大利亚:兰登书屋(澳)( Random House Australia )

     

作者简介

 

畅销作家。写有多部小说,比较著名的有An unfinished marriage ;A year by the sea

 

未完成的婚礼 (AN UNFINISHED MARRIAGE )

版权销售情况:

北美:百老汇图书出版社;

澳大利亚:兰登书屋(澳大利亚公司)( Random House Australia );

巴西西西里出版社Siciliano

希伯来文莫登出版社 Modan

荷兰布托出版社 Bzztoh

 

海边的一年A YEAR BY THE SEAThoughts of an Unfinished Woman 纽约时报畅销书

本书描述女性梦想拥有一段属于自己的时间,可以远离家庭的束缚,一个人安安静静地思考,再次发现自我。想法细腻,充满大自然的气息。

作者琼
安德森放弃与丈夫一同到外地工作,决定独自搬到鳕角(Cape Cod)居住。在这段离开丈夫的独居时间,她贴近自然,从和海豹嬉戏的过程中学会与自己共处;到当地的鱼市场工作,更加清楚知道自己的需求;此外,这一年的独居让她亲近海洋,贴近狂野,过着随海潮涨落来记量的时间,随自己意愿去做事的生活。经过了整个海潮的循环,重新与大自然建立起亲密的关系琼一个属于所有女性的希望她以简洁流畅的文字写成这篇探索女性心灵的动人史诗。

 

版权销售情况:

北美:道布尔戴出版社( Doubleday)

巴西:西西里出版社 (Siciliano )

繁体中文:台湾智库文化 ( Triumph )

德国:DTV出版社 (DTV)

荷兰:布托出版社 ( Bzztoh)

以色列:莫登出版社 ( Modan )

日本:光文社 ( Kobunsha )

韩国:地球之爱出版社 (Earth Love)

西班牙:爱迪新斯 ( Ediciones B )

瑞典: 瑞切斯出版(Richters)

英国:麦克米伦公司 (Macmillan )

 

 

 

 

ICARUS GIRL

By Helen Oyeyemi

电子稿, 400多页,2005年正式出版。

 

恐怖加心理,内容十分精彩。国外出版商十分看好这本书,认为此书将会有非常好的市场销售。好莱坞的导演对此书也相当有兴趣,多次询问电影版权情况。 

Jessamy 8岁,妈妈是尼日利亚人,爸爸是英国人。Jess平日里将写的俳句藏在厨里。父母对她很担心,认为 她有Asperger综合症(又称孤独样精神障碍)。于是带她去尼日利亚外公家里----那是一个大家庭。在那儿她认识了Titiola(也叫Tilly Tilly)。很奇怪,只有Jess能看得见Tilly。她是隐形人?还是幽灵?

Jess回英国上学了。Tilly如影随行。刚开始,她是Jess的朋友,给予Jess安慰和快乐。但慢慢地,她的存在越来越扰乱Jess的生活……有一天,Jess 发现她是双生子,她那个同胞姐妹一出生就死了。

小说写得抒情,有意境。预示着文坛又一个伟大的天才的到来。

 

先睹为快:

This is what happened the day that TillyTilly said she was going away:

Jess and TillyTilly were sitting on their favourite bench in the park, the one just out of sight of the roundabout, and Jess could hear insects humming somewhere in the bushes behind her as she drowsily regarded her friend, who had just said: ‘Jessy, I’m going away!’ Tilly was cross-legged, sitting with the green-and-white checked skirt of her school dress puddling out around her. She stared at Jess with her eyes wide, clearly waiting for a response. But Jess was unable to give an instant reaction to Tilly’s words. Instead, one hand holding her ice-cream cone, she reached behind her and idly snapped off a twig, turning the thin, small sharpness in her fingers.

It was far too hot for her to be interested in Tilly’s new plan.

Tilly looked cross, and fiddled with the strap on her new white sandals, the ones just likes Jess’s.

“Did you hear me?” she said afterwards, reaching out and flicking Jess on the shin. Jess jumped.

“Yeah,” she said, finally. “Where are you going, anyway?”

A pleased, almost smug expression grew on Tilly’s face. She darted her tongue out over her cone until the ice cream was all flat on top.

“Oh, just away,” she said, merrily.

      Jess didn’t want her ice-cream anymore. The cold taste of it was giving her a chill pain in the centre of her forehead. She offered the ice-cream to Tilly, who took it and lapped at the cone until she was sprawled over the grass with two flat cones and a big chocolatey smudge on her nose. Looking at her, Jess laughed.

Tilly laughed as well. Jess stretched out on the bench and looked up at the sky, hearing Tilly quietly licking at the cones, the muted intake of breath as the ice cream hit her tongue and she shifted it around in her mouth. The sky was deep blue and cloudless, so clear and high up yet all-around that Jess began to feel certain that the bench was moving, and taking her with it. Slowly, slowly, around…

Disorientated, Jess sat up and looked over at Tilly. She discovered that Tilly had been watching her with an odd expression, the last traces of which were leaving her face as Jess looked, only to be replaced by a smile, sudden and bright.

“So, when are you going?” Jess asked.

TillyTilly wrinkled her nose and looked sideways, as she did when thinking.

“Now!” she cried, shortly afterwards, then, amending as she saw Jess’s stricken face: “Today!”

Jess couldn’t believe that Tilly was going to be so casual about just leaving. Tilly was her best friend – you didn’t just do that. Unless: “Oi… don’t you like me anymore?”

“Of course I like you, silly,” Tilly said, scornfully. “But we get into too much trouble, so really I’d better go away for a little while, yeah?”

Jess thought about it. It was true, but she could only acknowledge it in the vaguest of ways. She knew that there had been trouble, but, in the stickiness of that day, it was difficult to remember precisely what.

“Well…alright then. But when are you coming back?”

Tilly considered again.

“Ummmmm,” she said, then, “Well, I’ll call you, from nearby. I’ll say: Jessy…”

Jess didn’t like the way that Tilly was giggling about it. She also didn’t like the way that Tilly had said her name in a spooky wailing voice.

“Okay?” TillyTilly said.

She looked at Jess, and she looked as if she was laughing, even though her mouth was not. It wasn’t nice-laughing, either. Sometimes, TillyTilly was mean, and acted as if Jess was stupid. Just because Tilly was so much cleverer than Jess, it didn’t mean that she had to show off. Trying to see what was so funny in what Tilly had just said, Jess uneasily shifted her weight from hand to hand.

“Okay, Jessy?” Tilly asked, again, then raised her voice slightly.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay?”

Jess put her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes tight shut. She liked TillyTilly a lot, but sometimes she didn’t. Like when Tilly tried to spoil things, and when she got Jess into trouble.

“OKAY!” Jess shouted.

   She heard TillyTilly run away, laughing as if she wanted to be chased, but Jess decided to stay put. This time, Tilly would have to do the making up.

 

Jess opened her eyes when she heard TillyTilly coming back across the grass already.

 

But it wasn’t Tilly.

Jess’s mum was standing over her, hands on her hips, looking worried. They both looked at Jess’s ice-cream cone on the floor.

“I didn’t want it anymore,” Jess explained, shading her eyes with her hand as she squinted up at her mother. Jess’s mum nodded, and took her hand.

“I was calling you for ages! What have you been up to?”

Jess spoke without thinking – the words just slipped out.

“Just talking to Tilly.”

 (OHNO!)

As soon as Jess saw her mother’s face, as soon as she remembered, as soon as she’d said it, even, she knew that this was a very bad thing to say. Her mum’s face crumpled into a tight frown, like Jess felt her own do sometimes, when she was really angry. Or when she got the cold tingles behind her eyeballs and knew that she was about to cry.

“Not again,” she said, letting go of Jess’s hand and staring at her. “Not again.” Her voice shook.

Jess knew what she had to do to make it better, to make her mother stop looking at her like that.

“Scared you, Mummy!” she shouted, jumping up and down on the spot in false gaiety. She put effort into it, looking into her mother’s face and laughing so hard her whole body was shaking almost uncontrollably. She knew she probably wouldn’t be able to stop until she got home. She watched her mum’s face open out into a smile, although her eyes kept searching Jess’s.

“Don’t do that again, silly!”

 

They joined hands again.


2

“Jess?”

Her mother’s voice sounded through the hallway, mixing in with the musty smell around her so well that the sound (almost) had a smell. To Jess, sitting in the cupboard, the sound of her name was strange, wobbly, misformed, as if she was inside a bottle, or a glass cube, maybe, and mum was outside of it, tapping.

I must have been in here too long-

“Jessamy!” Her mother’s voice was sterner.

Jessamy Harrison did not reply.

She was sitting inside the cupboard on the landing, where the towels and other cloth was kept, saying quietly to herself,

“I am in the cupboard.”

She felt that she needed to be saying this so that it would be real. It was similar to her waking up and saying to herself,

“My name is Jessamy. I am eight years old.”

     If she reminded herself that she was in the cupboard, she would know exactly where she was, something that was increasingly difficult every day. Jess found it easier not to remember, for example, that the cupboard she had hidden in was inside a detached house on Langtree Avenue. 

It was a small house, because her cousin Dulcie’s house was quite a lot bigger, and so was Tunde Coker’s house. The house had three bedrooms, but the smallest one had been taken over and cheerily cluttered with books, paper and broken pens by Jess’s mum. The small front and back garden patches of Jess’s home were readily referred to by both Jess’s parents, who cited lack of time to tend it themselves and lack of funds to get a gardener as their reasons, as ‘appalling’. Jess preferred cupboards and enclosed spaces to gardens, but she liked the clumpy lengths of brownish grass that sometimes hid earthworms when it was wet, and she liked the mysterious plants (weeds, according to her father) that bent and straggled around the inside of the fence. There was also a garden gnome in the back garden, where the lines for drying the clothes were.

No – one knew where the gnome had come from.

But it was red-cheeked, friendly and smiley, and wore a painted green coat with brown toggle buttons. Both the cupboard and the house were in Cranbrook, not too far from Dulcie’s house in Bromley. In Jess’s opinion, this proximity was unfortunate. In general, Jess didn’t like the outside of the cupboard.

Outside of the cupboard, Jess felt as if she was in a place that made her tired, where everything moved past too fast, all colours, all people talking, wanting her to say things. So she’d keep her eyes on the ground, which pretty much stayed the same. Then the grown-up would say:

“What’s the matter, Jess? Why are you sad?”

And then she’d have to explain that she wasn’t sad, just tired, though how she could be so tired in the middle of the day with the sun shining and everything, she didn’t know. It made her ashamed.

 “JESSAMY?”

“I am in the cupboard,” she whispered, moving backwards and stretching her arms out, feeling her elbows pillowed by thick, soft masses of towel. She felt as if she was in bed.

     A slit of light grew as the cupboard door opened and her mother looked in at her. Jess could already smell the staining of thick, wrong-flowing biro ink, the way it smelt when the pen went all leaky. She couldn’t see her mum’s fingers yet, but she knew that they would be blue with the ink, and probably the sleeves of the long yellow t-shirt she was wearing as well. Jess felt like laughing because she could only see half of her face, and it was like one of those ‘Where’s Spot?’ books. Lift the flap to find the rest. But she didn’t laugh, because her mum looked sort of cross. She pushed the door wider open.

“You were in here all this time?” she asked, her lips pursed.

Jess sat up, trying to gauge the situation. She was getting good at this.

“Yeah,” she said, hesitantly.

“Then why didn’t you answer?”

“Sorry, mummy.”

Her mother waited, and Jessamy’s brow wrinkled as she scanned her face, perplexed. Then she realised an explanation was somehow still required.

“I was thinking about something,” she said, after another moment.

Her mum leaned on the cupboard door, trying to peer into the cupboard, trying, Jess realised, to see her face.

“Didn’t you play out with the others today?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Jessamy lied. She had just caught sight of the clock. It was nearly six now, and she’d hidden herself in the landing cupboard after lunch.

      She saw her mum’s shoulders relax, wondering why she got so anxious about things like these. She’d heard her say lots of times, in lowered tones, that maybe it wasn’t right for Jessamy to play by herself so much, that it wasn’t right that she seemed to have nothing to say for herself. In Nigeria, her mother had said, children were always getting themselves into mischief, and surely that was better than sitting inside reading and staring into space all day. But her father, who was English and insisted that things were different here, said it was more or less normal behaviour and that she’d grow out of it. Jess didn’t know who was right, because she certainly didn’t feel as if she was about to run out and get herself into mischief, and she didn’t know whether she should hope that she would or not.

    Her mother held out a hand and Jess reluctantly left her towel pillows and stepped out onto the landing, grasping her hand. They stood there for a second, looking at each other, then her mother crouched and took Jessamy’s face in her hands, examining her. Jess held still, tried to assume an expression that would satisfy whatever her mother was looking for, although she could not know what this was. Then her mum said, quietly:

“I didn’t hear the back door all day.”

Jessamy started a little.

“What?”

Her mum let go of her, shook her head, laughed. Then she said:

“How would you like for us to go to Nigeria?”

Jess, still distracted, found herself asking:

“Who?”

Mum laughed.

“Us! You, me and Daddy!”

Jess felt stupid.

“Ohhhhh,” she said.

“In an aeroplane?”

Her mum, who was convinced that this was the thing to bring Jessamy out of herself, smiled.

“Yes! In an aeroplane! Would you like that?”

Jess began to feel excited. To Nigeria! In an aeroplane! She tried to imagine Nigeria, but couldn’t. Hot. It would be hot.

“Yeah,” she said, and smiled.

But if she knew the trouble it would cause, she would have shouted ‘No’ at the top of her voice and run back into the cupboard. Because it all STARTED in Nigeria, where it was hot, and, although she didn’t realise this until much later, the way she felt might have only been a phase, and she might have gotten better if only

(oh, if only if only if ONLY, mummy)

she hadn’t gone.

 

作者简介:

作者只有19岁,住在伦敦,有尼日利亚血统。剑桥大学Corpus Christi College学院社会政治系学生。

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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