We read a short story called Serrusalmus. The story is written by Lesley Glaister, who was born in 1956. Lesley is a British novelist and al in al she has written 12 novels.
The short story is about Marjorie, she suffers with a mental illness. She is having hard problems socializing with people and doesn’t have any friends. Her mental illness is called Agoraphobia, witch means that she is afraid of rooms, places, busses etc. with a lot of people in, places like this can cause panic attacks.
Marjorie has no family, but love living with her fish, they mean more to her than anything. She lives up high in an apartment, away from everyone. Because of her disease she never goes out, therefore the social services tries to help her. Mick, a teenager, stops by her place once in a while. Mick brings nothing but trouble, he borrows money witch he never returns, and makes her life even more miserable.
In the story we have our main character, Marjorie. She is old and lives on the 19th floor, as far away, as she can get from anyone. Marjorie has always wanted a child. She treats her fish like it’s her babies. She has never had a change to get any kids because of her disease, I would assume she have never had a boyfriend, therefore she thinks of her fish kind of as a replacement to having a child. The only person she is not afraid of is the local man Ron, selling her all her fish, it seems she has a crush on him.
The only place she really likes being is in the zoo, she has some lovely memories from there. She loves looking at ants, and watch how the stress around, live in their small boxes, reminding her of the people outside her own little apartment.
In the story we are also represented to the young guy called Mick. Mick is a yob, with a lot of trouble. The relationship between Mick and Marjorie is awful, he treats her bad and let all his anger out on her. Mick is the person she is most afraid of. He once killed one of her sick fish, he borrows a lot