De Schotse schrijver Christopher Brookmyre werd geboren op 6 september 1968 in Glasgow. Zie ook mijn blog van 6 september 2008.

Uit: Quite Ugly One Morning

„Jesus fuck.’

    Inspector McGregor wished there was some kind of official crime scenario checklist, just so that he could have a quick glance and confirm that he had seen it all now. He hadn’t sworn at a discovery for ages, perfecting instead a resigned, fatigued expression that said, ‘Of course. How could I have possibly expected anything less?’

    The kids had both moved out now. He was at college in Bristol and she was somewhere between Bombay and Bangkok, with a backpack, a dose of the runs and some nose-ringed English poof of a boyfriend. Amidst the unaccustomed calm and quiet, himself and the wife had remembered that they once actually used to like each other, and work had changed from being somewhere to escape to, to something he hurried home from.

    He had done his bit for the force — worked hard, been dutiful, been honest, been dutifully dishonest when it was required of him; he was due his reward and very soon he would be getting it.

    Islay. Quiet wee island, quiet wee polis station. No more of the junkie undead, no more teenage jellyhead stabbings, no more pissed-up rugby fans impaling themselves on the Scott Monument, no more tweed riots in Jenners, and, best of all, no more fucking Festival. Nothing more serious to contend with than illicit stills and the odd fight over cheating with someone else’s sheep.

    Bliss.

    Christ. Who was he kidding? He just had to look at what was before him to realise that the day after he arrived, Islay would declare itself the latest independentstate in the new Europe and take over Ulster’s mantle as the UK’s number one terrorist blackspot.

    The varied bouquet of smells was a delightful courtesy detail. From the overture of fresh vomit whiff that greeted you at the foot of the close stairs, through the mustique of barely cold urine on the landing, to the tear-gas, fist-in-face guard-dog of guff that savaged anyone entering the flat, it just told you how much fun this case would be.

    McGregor looked grimly down at his shoes and the ends of his trousers. The postman’s voluminous spew had covered the wooden floor of the doorway from wall to wall, and extended too far down the hall for him to clear it with a jump. His two-footed splash had streaked his Docs, his ankles and the yellowing skirting board. Another six inches and he’d have made it, but he hadn’t been able to get a run at it because of the piss, which had flooded the floor on the close side of the doorway, diked off from the tide of gastric refugees by a draught excluder.”

Christopher Brookmyre (Glasgow, 6 september 1968)

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Alice Sebold op 6 september 1962 in Madison, Wisconsin. Na de middelbare school ging zij studeren aan de Syracuse University. Als beginnend studente werd zij in een park vlabij de universiteit overvallen, in elkaar geslagen en verkracht. Zij studeerde af en herkende later de verkrachter op een campus bij de universiteit. Deze werd gearresteerd. Sebold bezocht daarna de universiteit in Houston in Texas en leefde vervolgens 10 jaar in New Yorks Manhattan. In 1999 verscheen haar eerste boek Lucky, waarin zij haar ervaringen uit het begin van haar studententijd verwerkte. In haar roman The Lovely Bones uit 2002 beschrijft zij de jacht op een verkrachter uit het perspectief van de verkrachte en vermoorde Susie die in een rijk tussen leven en dood aangekomen is.

Uit: The Almost Moon

„When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it. My mother’s core was rotten like the brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers. She had been beautiful when my father met her and still capable of love when I became their late-in-life child, but by the time she gazed up at me that day, none of this mattered.

If I hadn’t picked up my ringing phone, Mrs. Castle, my mother’s unlucky neighbor, would have continued down the list of emergency numbers posted on my mother’s almond-colored fridge. But within the hour, I found myself rushing over to the house where I was born. In haar roman

It was a cool October morning. When I arrived, my mother was sitting upright in her wing chair, wrapped in a mohair shawl, and mumbling to herself. Mrs. Castle said my mother hadn’t recognized her that morning when she’d brought the paper to the door.

“She tried to slam the door on me,” Mrs. Castle said. “She screamed like I was scalding her. It was the most pitiful thing imaginable.”

My mother sat, a totemic presence, in the flocked red-and-white wing chair in which she’d spent the more than two decades since my father’s death. She’d aged slowly in that chair, retiring first to read books and work her needlepoint, and then, when her eyes began to fail, to watch public television from dawn until she fell asleep in front of it after her evening meal. In the last year or two, she would sit in the chair and not even bother to turn on the television. Often she placed the twisted skeins of yarn that my older daughter, Emily, still sent each Christmas, in the center of her lap. She petted them the way some old women might pet cats.”

Alice Sebold (Madison, 6 september 1962)

De Duitse schrijfster Amelie Fried werd geboren op 6 september 1958 in Ulm. Na het gymnasium in Heppenheim studeerde zij van 1976 tot 1983 theater- en communicatiewetenschappen, kunstgeschiedenis en Italiaans in München, echter zonder de studies te voltooien. Daarna studeerde zij aan tot 1989 aan de Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München. Sinds 1984 presenteerde zij diverse televisieprogramma’s, waaronder sinds juli 2009 het literatuurprogramma Die Vorleser. Zij schrijft zowel kinderboeken als boeken voor volwassenen, waarvan er ook enkele werden verfilmd.

Uit: Die Findelfrau

„Holly blickte starr in das rote Licht über ihr. Eine warme Hand legte sich auf ihre kalten Hände, die sie auf dem Bauch gefaltet hatte wie zum Gebet. Lieber Gott, dachte sie, mach, dass alles gut geht. Dass die Schwester meine Unterlagen nicht vertauscht hat. Dass der Computer keine Panne hat. Dass der Doc gestern Nacht nicht zu wenig geschlafen oder zu viel gebechert hat.
Sie überlegte kurz, ob sie vom Tisch springen und weglaufen sollte, dann fielen ihr die ganzen Untersuchungen der letzten Wochen ein. Wäre alles umsonst gewesen, und sie würde es trotzdem bezahlen müssen.
Warum, zum Teufel, hatte sie sich überhaupt darauf eingelassen? War es wirklich so schlimm, kurzsichtig zu sein? Wenn sie die Brille abnahm, verschwamm die Welt zu farbigen Flecken. Ist doch eigentlich ganz schön, dachte sie plötzlich. Schöner als vieles, was sie sah, wenn sie die Brille wieder aufsetzte. Als Kind war sie gehänselt worden, klar. Blindschleiche, Brillenschlange, Streberin. Als junges Mädchen war sie mehr oder weniger blind durchs Leben getappt, weil sie lieber vom Auto überfahren worden wäre, als hässlich auszusehen. Obwohl sie mit ihren ausdrucksvollen, braunen Augen, dem schimmernden Teint und ihrem dunklen Haar als ausgesprochen hübsch galt, war sie überzeugt, dass eine Brille alles kaputt gemacht hätte.
Dann war sie immer wieder neben Typen aufgewacht, die leider nur aus der Ferne attraktiv gewesen waren. Eine Zeit lang hatte sie Kontaktlinsen getragen. Nachdem sie die dritte versehentlich im Waschbecken weggespült hatte, weigerten sich ihre Eltern, neue zu bezahlen. Als Holly endlich selbst Geld verdiente, bekam sie eine Allergie gegen Kontaktlinsen. Jetzt hatte sie genug. Sie wollte endlich wieder klar sehen.“

Amelie Fried (Ulm, 6 september 1958)

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Jennifer Egan werd geboren in Chicago op 6 september 1962. Zie ook mijn blog van 6 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 6 september 2008.

Uit: Look at Me

“I owe my life to what is known as a “Good Samaritan” someone who pulled me out of the flaming wreck so promptly that only my hair was burned, someone who laid me gently on the perimeter of the cornfield, called an ambulance, described my location with some precision and then, with a self-effacement that strikes me as perverse, not to mention un-American, chose to slink away anonymously rather than take credit for these sterling deeds. A passing motorist in a hurry, that sort of thing.
The ambulance took me to Rockford Memorial Hospital, where I fell into the hands of one Dr. Hans Fabermann, reconstructive surgeon extraordinaire. When I emerged from unconsciousness fourteen hours later, it was Dr. Fabermann who sat beside me, an elderly man with a broad, muscular jaw and tufts of white hair in both ears, though most of this I didn’t see that night — I could hardly see at all. Calmly Dr. Fabermann explained that I was lucky; I’d broken ribs, arm and leg, but had no internal injuries to speak of. My
face was in the midst of what he called a “golden time” before the “grotesque swelling” would set in. If he operated immediately, he could get a jump on my “gross asymmetry”–namely, the disconnection of my cheekbones from my upper skull and of my lower jaw from my “midface.” I had no idea where I was, or what had happened to me. My face was numb, I saw with slurry double vision and had an odd sensation around my mouth as if my upper and lower teeth were out of whack. I felt a hand on mine, and realized then that my sister, Grace, was at my bedside. I sensed the vibration of her terror, and it induced in me a familiar desire to calm her, Grace curled against me in bed during a thunderstorm, the smell of cedar, wet leaves…. . It’s fine, I wanted to say. It’s a golden time.
“If we don’t operate now, we’ll have to wait five or six days for the swelling to go down,” Dr. Fabermann said.“

Jennifer Egan (Chicago, 6 september 1962)

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 6e september ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.