My Death by Lisa Tuttle

Author:Lisa Tuttle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2023-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

AS SOON AS I was home and through the back door, sorrow was on me like an untrained, wet and smelly dog.

My kitchen smelled of untreated damp and ancient cooking—an unappetizing combination of mould, old vegetables, and fried onions. The creeping patch of black mould had returned to the ceiling in the corner nearest the back door, and the pile of newspapers meant for recycling was weeks old. There were crumbs on the table along with a pile of unanswered mail and three dirty cups, a bath-towel draped across one of the chairs, and an odd sock on the floor. When I’d left, the general dirt and untidiness had been invisibly familiar, but now I saw it as a stranger might, and was dismayed. The very thought of all that needed to be done made me tired.

I couldn’t cope with it now. Without even pausing to make a cup of tea, I dumped my bag in the bedroom and escaped upstairs to the loft-conversion that was my office. There it was untidy, but not noticeably unclean, and the air was filled with the friendly familiar smell of old books. I picked my way through the stacks on the floor to my desk, where I switched on the computer and went straight to my email inbox.

Selwyn, bless him, was already on the case, but along with the rousing words of his faith in my ability to write a “splendid, uniquely insightful biography” of Helen Ralston, his email carried disquieting news. He’d found an article—“Masks and Identity in Three American Novels”—published three years earlier in an academic journal. The author, Lilith Fischler, Tulane University, was said to be working on a book about Helen Elizabeth Ralston.

This should certainly be taken with a grain of salt [he wrote]—academics are required to be always working on some project or other, and very few of these putative books ever appear in print. And if it does exist it is more likely to be a critical study than a biography. But why don’t you ask her and find out?

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