Jayne Anne Phillips was the writer who first turned me onto short stories. I randomly came across her collection Fast Lanes in my local library. ‘Home” is a deeply uncomfortable story about a woman in her twenties who returns home to live with her mother when she is broke. It explores the tensions (old and new) that arise between them, tensions that are compounded when the narrator brings an old lover to stay the night.
From Black Tickets, Faber and Faber, 1979. Extract available here
A Personal Anthology 