Form and craft are very seductive forces, I feel, and I confess I’m still at the stage in life where I am enamoured by journalism that reads like fiction. I just love the convergence of real people and good storytelling. Pieces like this often make me think about our default instinct to narrate chronologically, to replay how time has struck us, and Jones’s essay shows that a human life can be narrated in many directions and it can begin with an ending.

First published in Esquire, May 2008. Read here