Beth Spencer

I start a refrain in my head. Singing along to the thirties hashish song they are playing downstairs, I sing fuck politics, let’s dance. I sing it in a Greek accent, give the phrase middle-eastern inflections ... How do you give a plot description of this book without entering into the very language that it problematises? Ari is young, unemployed, Greek and gay ... Or Ari is a poofter wog, ... (read more)

Ally is fifty-four when her husband leaves her. Her best friend and her daughter – neither of whom she has ever really talked to before – are each thousands of miles away. She descends rapidly into an undignified breakdown. Retreating from everyone and everything, she grows increasingly fat and fearful. Ally has never been terribly confident in her own identity (‘People tend to look past her ... (read more)