Helen+Simpson

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=Helen Simpson=



Helen Simpson is an English writer from Bristol in the West of England. Before her success in writing short stories, Helen worked at Vogue in order to save up enough money to become a full time writer. Her first collection, //Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories//, won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award while her book //Hey Yeah Right Get A Life//, a series of interlinked stories, won the Hawthornden Prize. Helen has been elected as one of Granta's top 20 novelists under the age of 40.

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But you love opera," he said. "the early stuff. I know you do." "Yes," she said. "I do."  "So what's the problem?" he said. "Try that red thing on now."  She was standing in her underwear with clothes heaped round her feet, while he lolled on the bed. Since the children and then the loss of her job she had retreated into a shambles of soft leggings and sweatshirts, merely day versions of her pajamas, except on occasions like now, when, kicking and screaming, she was dragged out for Client Entertainment. Then Christopher showed sudden interest in what she wore, as keen-eyed on the effect of this or that dress as any old-style libertine.  "Front stalls, gala performance," he persisted. "//Orpheus and Eurydice//. Just right for a wedding anniversary, I'd have thought. Hold your stomach in, Janine. No, it's still no good. Try that black skirt again with the beaded top." "It's just about my favorite opera of all," she panted, hating her reflection in the mirror. "So fresh and unencumbered and straight to the heart. But." "But what," he said.  "But not with clients," Janine said reluctantly, as she knew this would enrage him.  "What difference does it make? They're all perfectly all right people. You're always on about how you like people." When he talked like this, she regarded it as a temporary madness in his life which she would have to put up with, like Pamina walking through the fire with Tamino, and have faith that they would be together again once he was over it.  "Clients aren't friends," she said.  "They //can// be," he said. "You're so narrow-minded. They can become very //good// friends." "No," she mumbled. "Clients are about money."  "Oh, wicked Mammon," he hooted. "//Everything's// about money if you're talking in that ignorant way. Music certainly is. Look at Covent Garden, for goodness' sake!" "Clients are business," she persisted, "not pleasure."  "Client entertainment is //all about// pleasure," he snarled. Good tickets, champagne, the works. You used to be more generous-spirited." "You can't get drunk with clients," she said. "You certainly can," said Christopher. "I do." "True," she conceded. "But you couldn't ever be really rude or insulting to clients." "You won't keep many friends that way either."

1. What aspects of contemporary writing come out in this exerpt?

2. Is the contemporary writing of 2012 similar to this contemorary exerpt?

3. What ideas in this exerpt make it contemporary?