Emily Perkins.
Oh, where to begin.
This is what she looks like -
But more importantly, this is what she writes like -
“Mud in Your Pretty Eye
Nine years later, you’re leaving a bar with a friend and you see him across the wet road, getting on to a bus. From then, from the restaurant.
Francis
You always thought, Francis, rhymes with answers. Which it doesn’t, really. But you’d change the s of answers to be soft like his name. Francis, Francis, there’s no answers. It was a walking rhyme. A home from the bus-stop rhyme. The rhyme of a Fifteen-year-old girl who could feel sad every time she thought of that soft s.
Hands in gloves in the hot water in the sink, you’d turn around and be surprised again, every time, when you saw his face. His eyes crinkled up and were almost lost when he laughed. His laugh was nearly silent and you tried to match it. You and your friend Thea had developed the habit of snorting whenever you laughed. You tried desperately to curb this around him. At the restaurant. You never thought of it as going to work, you thought of it as going to see Francis. You barely remembered that you were a dishwasher.
Brideshead Revisited was on television at the time.”
It’s the beginning of the first story I ever read by her - Not Her Real Name, which is also the name of the short story collection it’s part of. She also has three novels - Leave Before You Go, The New Girl and Novel About My Wife, and she’s the single biggest influence on my writing. I love the way she uses words. Check her out.
