I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive.

...and it strikes her, as she walks, that borders, like hatred, are exaggerated precisely because otherwise they would cease to exist altogether.

Anakana Schofield is part of a new wave of wonderful Irish fiction-international in scope and electrically alive.

So much of her time spent like this: dreaming up things to say and never quite saying them.

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.

Memory has a heavy backspin, yet it’s still impossible to land exactly where we took off.

The job of the writer is to look at where he is now and make some sort of emotional sense of it, not only for that moment but for years to come.