'Profoundly affecting' GUARDIAN'Extraordinary. It made me cry' MELISSA HARRISON'Wise and beautifully written' SINÉAD GLEESON'Made me feel that I too was more alive' LUCY CALDWELLA life is made up of many shocks -The scream of wheels over asphalt as cars collide. The unexpected death of a loved one and the long trek of grief.The brutality of teenage girlhood. The abiding...

'Profoundly affecting' GUARDIAN'Extraordinary. It made me cry' MELISSA HARRISON'Wise and beautifully written' SINÉAD GLEESON'Made me feel that I too was more alive' LUCY CALDWELLA life is made up of many shocks -The scream of wheels over asphalt as cars collide. The unexpected death of a loved one and the long trek of grief.The brutality of teenage girlhood. The abiding temptation of hunger. The stumbli...

'I adored this novel' Pandora Sykes'Incredibly moving' Charlie Gilmour'I read it in two evenings' Clover Stroud'Brilliant' Sarah MossIt begins with a miracle: a baby born too small and too early, but defiantly alive. This is Joe.Then, two years later, Emily, arrives. From the beginning, the siblings' lives are entwined.Snake back through time. In a patch of nettle-infested wilder...

'I adored this novel' Pandora Sykes'Incredibly moving' Charlie Gilmour'I read it in two evenings' Clover Stroud'Brilliant' Sarah MossIt begins with a miracle: a baby born too small and too early, but defiantly alive. This is Joe.Then, two years later, Emily, arrives. From the beginning, the siblings' lives are entwined.Snake back through time. In a patch of nettle-infested wilder...

Maclay School's Journal of Creative WritingOn our title: We take the title of this journal from a novella of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The novella is an existential piece, written before Dostoyevsky's greatest works and before Existentialism had really taken root in literature. The unnamed narrator is frequently named an anti-hero and is described by the note on the back of the Dover edition as a "profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-an...