To a Fault

Description

The debut collection from an exceptional new talentdone We've come to bag the evidence. This might be the scene of a murder. Dustsheets and silence and blame. The flat empties its stomach into the hall. We have given back letters and eaten our words. You wrote off the Volvo. I gave you verrucas. And like the window of a jeweller's after closing the shelves in the study offer up nothing. I slowly take the steps down one by one, and for the first time maybe, notice the chaos, the smouldering traffic, the litter, bystanders, what have you

Nick Laird was born in 1975 in Co. Tyrone, and studied English at the University of Cambridge, where he won the Quiller-Couch Award for creative writing. He has lived in Warsaw and Boston, where he was a visiting fellow at Harvard University, and now lives in London. His debut novel, Utterly Monkey, will be published in May 2005 by Fourth Estate.