The Creative Life on the Page (Five Books)

2023-10-12T15:31:24-04:00

Because I forgot my key one day, I had to wait in the neighbourhood library for Mister BIP to finish work, before I could go home. I suppose I could have waited in the subway station. But it was only a 20-minute walk. Of course I walked: wouldn't you? One

The Creative Life on the Page (Five Books)2023-10-12T15:31:24-04:00

Mavis Gallant’s “Poor Franzi”

2017-03-26T10:12:05-04:00

At one table, we have the Wrights, on the crowded hotel terrace, with the Austrian mountains playing picture-postcard for the family, who has journeyed from Baltimore. They're a cranky lot, with daughters Coralie and Joan having had a different set of expectations for their travels, which neither their mother nor

Mavis Gallant’s “Poor Franzi”2017-03-26T10:12:05-04:00

Margaret Millar’s The Listening Walls (1959; 2016)

2017-03-06T16:21:14-05:00

Although some of the characters in the Margaret Millar mysteries I have read answer their own phones, many answer other people's phones instead: the telephones of older or more privileged relatives or those of their bosses. There's even a switchboard operator in the mix, along with a woman better known

Margaret Millar’s The Listening Walls (1959; 2016)2017-03-06T16:21:14-05:00

The First Jalna Story: Meeting Adeline

2017-10-27T09:47:46-04:00

In 1944, Mazo de la Roche published The Building of Jalna, nearly twenty years after she began to work with the Whiteoak family on the page. The beginning grew out of the middle, you might say. Jalna was actually written first, begun in 1925 and published in 1927: the fifth

The First Jalna Story: Meeting Adeline2017-10-27T09:47:46-04:00

Mavis Gallant’s “Autumn Day” (1955)

2020-09-29T16:34:35-04:00

I laid in with this story, while on a brief holiday in a small town outside Toronto. Outside, the sound of other people's everyday morning scurried past, but I was not required to be anywhere in particular that day. Salzburg Austria, Prison overlooking town [Piotr Bozyk, Click for credit]

Mavis Gallant’s “Autumn Day” (1955)2020-09-29T16:34:35-04:00
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