James and the Giant BLEEP

Old books, bad words and the alchemical good of reading

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  • Published 20240206
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-92-4
  • Extent: 204pp
  • Paperback, ePub, PDF, Kindle compatible

NON-FICTION I USED TO read to Jack in the library. 

‘Let’s go,’ I’d whisper. And we’d walk the cracked concrete path from the multipurpose room with its short-pile orange carpet to the school library at the back of the grounds, where a librarian sat wordlessly at the borrowing desk, eyeing us with suspicion.

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There are others like me, those who have, in faintly euphemistic terms, left the church, what we might otherwise call the spiritually unmoored, though we’ve invented specific words for them: lapsed – adjective, mildly noncommittal, perhaps only temporary; apostate – noun, sharper, less impassive. But whatever you call us, no matter the nomenclature, we’re now foreigners, I believe, in one place or another, still too much of this to be that, betrayed by something like a subtle accent, a vowel bent out of shape, if you watch or listen for it closely enough.

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