Twenty Past Three

Twenty past three is the minute most lives slide over.Too early for tea. Too late for the morning. Neither hour nor half. A small unguarded place between things.These thirty-six stories live in that minute.A widower listens to a Bakelite radio that plays four soft notes by itself. A schoolboy steps through a stopped clock and is offered one minute to choose. A platform appears between Platforms 1 and 3 at a station where no train should arrive. A child waits at a bus stop for a route discontinued years ago.Quietly uncanny and unexpectedly tender, Twenty Past Three is a book about grief and grace, attention and choice — about the patient minute in which the world allows us, briefly, to catch up with ourselves.Read one before bed. Read one when you cannot sleep.And next time the clock reads 3:20 — you will know what to do.