sophieraudnitz

Esther – earlier

Esther – earlier The table was large but even so, on this Friday evening, with the number of people squeezed around it and the half empty plates and dishes that littered it, it seemed not nearly large enough. Ruth, Esther’s sister-in-law, brandished a piece of golden baklava on her fork and as she held forthContinue reading “Esther – earlier”

Sally

Sally closed her mother’s bedroom door quietly and as she stood in the darkness of the hallway, felt the weight of exhaustion descend. After they had watched the tail lights of the police car disappear around the corner, Hannah had allowed herself to be put back to bed without complaint but also without apology. UnwillingContinue reading “Sally”

Esther

(TW domestic violence) The Dunhill she’d lit sat in the dip of the ashtray. She got through a pack a day but barely took three puffs of each, liking the ritual and the smell as they burned though not really the act of smoking itself. Tonight, though Esther had craved it, the cigarette turned herContinue reading “Esther”

New project!

Since being ill with long covid, I’ve struggled to get my head together for academic posts. I have, however, finally found the impetus to write some biographical fiction about my family which I will post here. It takes the form of short stories – two so far – about the ordinary and extraordinary lives ofContinue reading “New project!”

‘but set down/This set down/This’: memory and identity in The Lonely Londoners and The Handmaid’s Tale

It’s nearly Christmas but I never need that excuse for ‘The Journey of the Magi’ to be in my head and I’m always drawn to the versification of the quotation above. I love the emphatic, almost excited repetition of the old man making his testimony, enhanced by the lack of punctuation between the two imperatives,Continue reading “‘but set down/This set down/This’: memory and identity in The Lonely Londoners and The Handmaid’s Tale”

Tokens of remembrance: my mum’s earrings

My mum loved jewellery. When she died in May of this year, my brother and I sat around the coffee table at my parents’ house emptying boxes and bags of it, deciding what to keep or throw. She had amassed it over her lifetime, some from family – her mother had a similar penchant –Continue reading “Tokens of remembrance: my mum’s earrings”

The question of sympathy in Medea and Beloved (a sister post to my last)

It must be near impossible for anyone writing or reading about infanticide to avoid recalling Medea, whether consciously or not. When I set out to write about Beloved, this was the classical text that immediately came to mind but somehow, the comparison just didn’t seem to work. This was partly because I knew that IContinue reading “The question of sympathy in Medea and Beloved (a sister post to my last)”

In which I muse on some of the things I found interesting about memory in Toni Morrison’s Beloved…

When I set out to write this piece, I only knew that I was interested in the idea of ‘rememory’ in Beloved. I thought I might compare the text to something ancient Greek, as I usually do, and wondered about infanticide (Medea), trauma (Electra, Hecuba) and collective, communicative trauma (as in my PhD work onContinue reading “In which I muse on some of the things I found interesting about memory in Toni Morrison’s Beloved…”

An update of sorts

It has been ages since I posted anything and this is frustrating! As the Easter holiday draws to a close, I finally feel recovered enough after the onslaught of last term to start thinking about writing again. Today, I put together some thoughts about ‘the perfect lady’ in Wharton’s The House of Mirth which I’dContinue reading “An update of sorts”

5F Form Scholars Talk – Complete forgetting and the wax tablet: an introduction to cultural and political memory via Homer and Plato

This afternoon, I’m going to ask you to think about some concepts which were at the centre of my PhD, not just because I find them interesting and know a bit about them, but because I hope that by thinking about them, you might look at the societies around you – the school, your families,Continue reading “5F Form Scholars Talk – Complete forgetting and the wax tablet: an introduction to cultural and political memory via Homer and Plato”