The meadow stretches out under an easy afternoon sun. A man lies beside a mound of pastries, one hand resting lightly on a loaf he never bothers to take. A woman sits a few steps away, watching a roasted goose drift in slow circles above her, carried by a mild breeze. Near them,…

I suppose many of you have heard that now-iconic Beckett quote: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. The fact that I’m beginning to reflect on this particular theme is, of course, no coincidence. Failure as theory and failure as reality are two…

“No,” said the Girl, and there was a familiar note in her voice. Painfully familiar. “No parking!” “Keep off the grass!” “Occupied!” “Oh, come on,” thought the Boy – who by now wasn’t really a boy anymore, but a short-cropped, greying little man. “It was ‘no’ the other day, too,…

In a house filled with broken toys and forgotten dreams, nine-year-old Anne — called Firecurl for the wild red hair she cannot tame — stumbles into a game far older, and far more dangerous, than it first appears. When a strange model landscape bewitches her and a storm of anger…