ByRachel Sykes

Rachel Sykes researches contemporary US fiction but has a lot of time for Gogol, Prince, and the genre-defying work, Dreamgirls.

  1. I have a song that follows me around. Every couple of years, ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ finds me, like someone seeking forgiveness. The intro comes on the radio, the sound of the piano trickles like rain against a building, and I know that it’s come back again. It’s strange, because the song’s not attached to a particular sadness, to a particular break-up. In fact, it feels like a bit of an asshole. Like…

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  2. I always wanted to be Lois Lane. On Saturdays, I would watch Lois & Clark from beneath my mum’s potted plants and mock up copies of The Daily Planet on my stepdad’s typewriter. Sometimes, I pretended that the kitchen radio recorded the interviews that I conducted with the cat. The delusion stretched so far that I remember constructing elaborate fantasies in which an unknown, wealthy relative would one day send me a dictaphone. Only then…

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