Last night I read Ian Sansom's diary in the spring edition of The Dublin Review. It is mostly about him readjusting to life in the UK after moving from Belfast. His mother is ailing, and her condition worsens to the point that she becomes bedridden and his family are looking into palliative care. In between he notes political events, zoom workshops, and mice flitting at the edges of sight. Sometimes he records the conversations he has with the women who work in the cafe near his flat: their feelings and desires and longing for other places. That longing for a better life that we all share. How our lives are braided with the lives of others, and their fortunes made us joyful or sad, and isn't that the point of reading, to feel the lives of others, and in turn feel what you forget to notice in the midst of the prosaic everyday, the weird and sad and sometimes wonderful textures of your own life?





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