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Twenty-Seven Years Old - Jane Graham
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Toby Coleman 28

He looked relieved, kissed me, and picked up the bottle. ‘Look, I got a nice Beaujolais,’ he said, showing it to me.

‘How much?’ I asked.

His normally open, boyish face closed for a moment, and then he said warily, ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because we’re going halves, of course.’

‘We’re not,’ he said in a rigid voice that should have warned me.

‘But Toby, we are, of course we are! That’s only fair!’

‘What’s fairness got to do with it? Please shut up about it. I’m paying for the lousy thing, and that’s the end of that.’

‘But you can’t afford – ’

‘I know I can’t!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘I can’t afford any of the bloody decencies of life! I can’t afford to take you out properly or buy you a proper Christmas present, or be able to tell you not to worry – I’m twenty-eight years old and I’m still living from hand to mouth like a bloody tramp. Since I was eighteen I’ve been writing, ten years already, and so what? I’ve written two novels and five plays and God knows how many short stories, and what keeps me alive, even? A couple of lousy articles a month, stuff I mug up and toss off and get no feeling from doing, just a feeling of disgust because it seems to be all I’m fit for!’ He turned away, his shoulders slumping suddenly. ‘Why don’t I shut up,’ he said, the anger gone from his voice and only bitterness left.

Lynne Reid Banks  ·  The L-Shaped Room

28

Richard Francis Fanshawe

Of Love and Hunger

Julian Maclaren-Ross

"Next day was my birthday. July 6th. I was twenty-eight. No presents, though..."

28

Timothy John Sinnott

Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel

William Trevor

"Timothy John, twenty-eight, whose face, set in a narrow head unlike either of his parents’, at once suggested his timid nature..."

28

Stanley Kowalski

A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams

"Hey, there! Stella Baby!"

28

Ralf Wittemore

'The Pot of Gold'

John Cheever

"He was twenty-eight years old; poverty and youth were inseparable in his experience..."

28

Iago

Othello: The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice

William Shakespeare

"O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times seven years..."

28

Yossarian

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

"He could not make them understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not worth the effort, and they bored him, too"