Saddened to learn that Om Puri has died aged only sixty-six. I loved him, of course, as the flawed Pakistani father in East is East. And as the taxi driver in My Son the Fanatic (based on a short story by Hanif Kureishi). I watched him more recently in Satyajit Ray's 1981 film Sadgati/Deliverance - Puri, in his early thirties, gave a devastating performance as an 'untouchable'.
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The last book I read in 2016 was Hisham Matar's The Return. Anne Enright describes it as a terrible and lovely book, and it is: the writing is lovely and the truth is terrible, the knowing and not knowing the brutality of his father's death at the hands of the Gaddafi regime in the nineties. I underlined several passages as I read, words that stay in my head: 'I have always wondered if it is possible to lose your father without sensing the particular moment of his death'.
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Happy that 2017 will see with the upcoming publication (print and digital) of Bath Flash Fiction anthology - I had a story longlisted almost a year ago - 'A widow with a bowl of wine and lipstick coming off'. This flash was inspired by seeing my dear stepfather in the funeral parlour in February 2015, the image still shocks me, though it was one of peace, but nothing about it was real, nothing.
I've not written much flash fiction, I've read more, but I think flash titles are very important, they act like a hinge for what's unfolding. I see flash fiction like fireworks - small with a beautiful punch - but still demanding time and energy in creating. Flash lends itself well to low energy writing. And as you tweak even 300 words, you know more than ever, as you shift the words around in such a small space, how arbitrary it all is. The story was accepted by an online literary journal at the same time as it was longlisted and I had to decide where I wanted it placed. I look forward to seeing my words - which with time passing now seem 'remote' - see the light of day.
I've not written much flash fiction, I've read more, but I think flash titles are very important, they act like a hinge for what's unfolding. I see flash fiction like fireworks - small with a beautiful punch - but still demanding time and energy in creating. Flash lends itself well to low energy writing. And as you tweak even 300 words, you know more than ever, as you shift the words around in such a small space, how arbitrary it all is. The story was accepted by an online literary journal at the same time as it was longlisted and I had to decide where I wanted it placed. I look forward to seeing my words - which with time passing now seem 'remote' - see the light of day.
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