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Hello and welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. We're continuing with our December readings.

This week, Diane Williams, reading nine of her stories, which have been published in the LRB since 2015.

Diane Williams is the editor of Noon and the author of several collections of short,

often very short, stories.

Her collected stories were published by Soho Press in 2018.

Lamb chops, cod. She had stopped insisting that they have heart-to-heart conversations, but for stranded people,

they had these nice moments together, and he had his professional enjoyment at the newspaper.

He approved the issues there with the scientific mind,

and he made quite a contribution. He was a consultant in the field of efficiency.

She should have appreciated that, I guess. I don't know. She felt lonely. After dinner, he would go into his room and sometimes read

or do his engraving, or follow-up on his stamp collection, or solve math problems from last

year's baccalaureate examination. Once he told me that once a year he re-read our man in Havana. It had something to do with

Havana. You know, petty things. I guess my mother wanted full attention, not for him to have

private time by himself. I don't know what my mother did when she was in her room. She was working.

She was working a lot. She devoted herself to family matters, making trouble. But I'm convinced

...