banner photo by L.L. Murray
Helen Simpson is the author of five short story collections: Four Bare Legs in a Bed, Dear George, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life, Constitutional and In-Flight Entertainment.
Her new book, A Bunch of Fives: Selected Stories, is so called because it includes five stories from each of her previous collections; and also because, starting in 1990, these collections have been published at five-year intervals. It is published in the UK this month.
In 1991, she won the Somerset Maugham Award and was also named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. In 2001, she was awarded the Hawthornden Prize, and in 2002, she received the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Read
UP AT A VILLA
by Helen Simpson
*a
© Helen Simpson
With thanks to the author for her kind pemission to re-print the story and to The Asham Literary Endowment Trust for making this contribution possible.