Kate Kellaway
Could Be Useful at Cocktail Parties
A Whore's Profession: Notes and Essays
By David Mamet
Faber & Faber 432pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
Not far from where I’m writing this (in Islington, North London), David Mamet, in some unspecified year, was walking along in search of a cup of tea. He found one in a café, opposite Islington library. At this point, reading his account and knowing the area, anxiety overtook me: which café? Was he well advised? Was there a café outside Islington library? None that I could remember. But I need not have worried. He was ecstatic:
‘I take a seat in the front of the place; sunlight is streaming over the road. Across the street is Islington library… this Irish woman is about to bring me tea. The afternoon is, in effect, perfect. Even should the tea shoppe be forced to close, by some terrible mischance,
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