‘Brilliant. Among the best novels I know about the fate of American innocence abroad’ Garth GreenwellSo. We were Americans abroad. We weren’t the doomed travellers in a Paul Bowles novel, and we weren’t the idealists or the malarial, religion-damaged burnouts in something by Greene; but we were people far from home nevertheless. Our naivety didn’t have political consequences. We had G.P.S. in our smartphones. I don’t think we were alcoholics. Our passports were in the same drawer as our collection of international adapters, none of which seemed to fit in Brazilian wall sockets. My husband was in the chrysalis stage of becoming a rich man, and idealism was never my vice.I was ancillary – a word that comes from the Latin for ‘having the status of a female slave’. That’s the sort of thing I know, and it tells you something about how I misspent my education. The term among expats for people like me was ‘trailing spouse’ . . .‘Captivating’Irish Times‘Devastating, funny and wise’ Garth Greenwell‘A triumph’ Samantha Harvey‘A writer so gifted with language that you forget who you are in the poetry of his prose’ Uzodinma Iweala‘Magnificent, profound, and true’ Elisa Albert‘Reminded me in parts of Maggie Nelson. Stunning’ Sophie Mackintosh
Оглавление
Ian Mackenzie. Feast Days
Copyright
Praise
Dedication
Epigraph
PER DIEM
FALSE COGNATES
FINANCIAL CONSIDERATIONS
BEAUTIFUL WORKS OF ART GUARANTEE A 100% EXPERIENCE
THE CHILDREN’S PARTY
INCIDENTALS
THE DISASTER OF HETEROSEXUALITY
YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN WHAT THE GINI COEFFICIENT IS
DO YOU WANT SOMETHING?
IN DEFENSE OF THIS LIFE
PROTO-ROMANCE
TEXTS
RETURN
SYMPATHY FOR THE WIFE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Ian MacKenzie
About the Publisher
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‘This brilliant novel has no time for platitudes or conventional, ankle-deep morality; it plunges us straight to the depths. I’m not sure I know another book that feels at once so disaffected and so full of longing, so expansive in its sympathy and so terrifying in its candour. Devastating, funny and wise, it’s among the best novels I know about the fate of American innocence abroad’
GARTH GREENWELL
.....
That sounds god-awful. Of course I imagine they were black, and I imagine this somehow makes you feel worse about what happened. Don’t. Don’t think about it one more second.
Helen had also left New York during the previous year. She had a different set of reasons and went to Washington—a job, putting distance between herself and an ex-boyfriend, a general hunger that she had. Helen was my Republican friend. She said and thought things I would never say and rarely thought. She possessed a kind of Ayn Rand ruthlessness that troubled me but which I also admired. I replied:
