The Stinging Fly Podcast

Darran Anderson Reads Mary O'Donoghue

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Online Fiction Series
Anamnesis

‘I have a habit of telling stories too fast, expecting a coherent narrative to spring up from a few words flimsily strung together on a string. The problem is words words words. The more neatly I arrange them, the more they lose their flavour.’

Not Any Old Hundred Years

‘I remember my uncle cutting his toe nails with a razor blade. I remember my father drunk from Sunday to Sunday. There has to be a monument to the failures as well.’

Happiness

‘Something always came down like a guillotine to split her life in two, so that on one side was happiness, and on the other, the present.’

Tomahawk

‘This was in Montpellier, in 2012. He was a legionnaire from Birmingham; his reclaimed name was Roger, and he was the most intelligent murderer I have ever met.’

[Cue happiness]

‘In the hours and days after seeing Eugene, I was particularly bad: sobbing uncontrollably, vomiting, roaring into the hell’s bells of night. I prayed for typhus, Asiatic cholera, plain old consumption, anything that would do the job for me. I had no way to impart how terrible and terrified I felt except to write it down.’

Chemistry Read

‘Her husband was asleep beside her, snoring gently, and she lay, breathing shallowly, planning her next move.’ 

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