Mailing List


Sophie Mackintosh
Sophie Mackintosh's fiction has appeared in Granta and The Stinging Fly, among others. She was the winner of the 2016 White Review Short Story Prize and the Virago X Stylist short story prize. Her debut novel, The Water Cure, is published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and forthcoming from Doubleday in the US.

Articles Available Online


Lena Andersson's ‘Acts of Infidelity’

Book Review

July 2018

Sophie Mackintosh

Book Review

July 2018

Acts of Infidelity is the second novel by Lena Andersson that follows unlucky-in-love heroine Ester Nilsson, and it’s another scalpel-sharp look at a doomed...

Fiction

May 2018

Self-Improvement

Sophie Mackintosh

Fiction

May 2018

I had been sent back from the city in disgrace, back to my parents’ house in the country. It...

After sex that night, which was at best perfunctory, I lay on my back on top of the duvet with my knees drawn up to my chest, like I’d seen Maude do in The Big Lebowski Owen was in the bathroom and I could tell from the sporadic muffled yelps that he was tweezing his nose hair   ‘Gravity,’ I said aloud I’d read about gravity-assisted conception, how to give the swimmers a better chance Owen was the one who cooed over babies, so I assumed he would applaud my initiative   I was right Three weeks later, I waited nervously on a deckchair in our small garden, while Owen checked the pregnancy test One blue line meant no hCG hormone, no baby Two blue lines meant baby Of course it was two I knew even before Owen burst through the patio doors, holding the pee-stick triumphantly in the air, a wide grin on his face I just knew I stood up and we gripped each other tightly   ‘This moment,’ he said, to me, to the cluster of cells in my uterus, ‘this moment we will remember forever’   Owen knelt to kiss my stomach and when he raised his face to me there was a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before It may have been wonder Or excitement Or something else     Week 12   When I arrived home after work, Owen was in the narrow galley kitchen rinsing salad with filtered water and blackening two tuna steaks on a griddle   ‘To get rid of the bugs,’ he said, as he served up pieces of desiccated fish with a side of damp lettuce I was finally hungry again and could have murdered a rare steak with blue cheese sauce, but I guessed Owen would rather I went hungry than let me eat bloodied meat and unpasteurised cheese He poured a glass of wine and a glass of milk and we sat down at the small table   ‘I checked the book today,’ he said He’d spent the last few weeks reading What To Expect When You’re Expecting and regaling me with facts about the developments in my womb He

Contributor

April 2016

Sophie Mackintosh

Contributor

April 2016

Sophie Mackintosh’s fiction has appeared in Granta and The Stinging Fly, among others. She was the winner of the...

Grace

Prize Entry

Issue No. 17

Sophie Mackintosh

Prize Entry

Issue No. 17

14. It comes for me in the middle of the day when I am preparing lunch, quartering a tomato then slicing each segment in...

READ NEXT

poetry

January 2015

Why I'm Not a Great Lover

Clemens J. Setz

TR. Ross Benjamin

poetry

January 2015

Why I’m Not A Great Lover   The circumstances. The zeitgeist.   The inner uncertainty. The lack of belief...

Interview

Issue No. 4

Interview with Ahdaf Soueif

Jacques Testard

Interview

Issue No. 4

In 1999, Ahdaf Soueif’s second novel, The Map of Love, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, eventually losing out...

Prize Entry

Issue No. 17

Grace

Sophie Mackintosh

Prize Entry

Issue No. 17

14. It comes for me in the middle of the day when I am preparing lunch, quartering a tomato...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required