Costello’s stories are generally rigorous, austere, unconsoling – stylistically, the sort of thing I gravitate toward very easily. Her latest collection Barcelona is mostly stories of pain distilled into precise prose. But this, the longest and perhaps best story in the book, is a bit different. It’s more expansive in both story and style, about a woman whose husband has a sex addiction. She “loathes people with big appetites”, which is probably connected to those qualities in Costello’s stories I mentioned earlier. But it also has unexpected comedy, and the feel of a writer stretching herself in different ways – so it feels both more traditional than Costello’s other work, but also excitingly new because it’s unlike that work. It’s a complete thing.
First published in the New Yorker, 9 Oct 2023 where it can be read online, and as part of the collection Barcelona, Canongate, 2024
A Personal Anthology 