‘The woman dies. She dies to develop the narrative. She dies because no one could think of what else to do with her.’ Aoko Matsuda, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton.

When I was six, I opened the door of a friend’s mobile home one afternoon and almost stepped on a snake. He was curled up on the porch a few dozen inches from my bare feet, basking in the late day...

A man’s appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite—for food, for sex, for simple attention—is always voracious: she always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist.