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Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

My first impression was of a tall building laid down for a nap, with all its parts nestled together side-by-side The lawn in front seemed out of place, discoloured by spots I moved into the spare bedroom of my grandfather’s house and started my new teaching job at a local college They’d hired me to teach video game environment design, but I was still too young to own real furniture On free days I drove my grandfather to his haematology appointments He navigated our route and swore at the German nurse who drew his blood in German She laughed from her belly and called him a hick, because he spoke in a dialect, just like his parents, who came from a German-speaking village in the Ukraine In the mornings I made elaborate coffees while he rested at the kitchen table, cracking his knuckles He often spoke to his friends on the phone in a low, rhythmic voice I couldn’t follow I remember wiping down the red Formica counters and thinking that perhaps the lawn was diminished due to stress Then a pox of barren patches swept up from the street, and what green remained just withered and crisped   I looked online and certain companies can be hired to paint your grass the appropriate colour, which is the solution I would have entertained, had it been my lawn One day I walked around the side of the house and found the irrigation switch turned off and taped over with a big black X I recognised this intervention as my grandfather’s handiwork, perhaps a statement about the drought, a water conserving measure, or who knows what I wasn’t too surprised   So I went to work and flirted with the product designers They wore dark-rimmed glasses and were the best dressed of anyone on staff I mentioned the immaculately restored 1950s single-story home where I’d deposited my trash bags full of shoes One of them bought me three martinis, and though he hadn’t yet seen my grandfather’s house, he described its features: A simple floor plan sprawling out instead of up, an attached garage

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

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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...

feature

November 2014

The Last Redoubt

Scott Esposito

feature

November 2014

As they say of politics, I have found essay-writing to be the art of the possible. Certain work can...

poetry

August 2016

Three New Poems

Sarah V. Schweig

poetry

August 2016

‘The Audit’ and ‘Red Bank’ are excerpts from Schweig’s forthcoming book, Take Nothing With You (University of Iowa Press, 2016).  ...

 

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