The previous story ends with an imprisonment: “He had got the woman from church to dining room, and he would keep her there trapped, cornered, threatened, watched, until she yielded to Grippes and told her name – as, in his several incarnations, good Poche had always done.” I’m thinking
No wonder you were so smitten with David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon. This is the kind of story I imagine filled the pages of those vintage Adventure magazines: unexpected fortunes, devastating losses, deceit and betrayal. All written with dialogue and description that makes it seem like a
This story is about Henri Grippes (familiar for readers of this collection, from “A Painful Affair” and “A Flying Start”) and O. Poche, who works in the taxation office. But it’s also about novelist Henri Grippes and his imaginings of O. Poche, who will appear in countless fictions. This
In 19 years, you haven’t forgotten to wish me a Happy Canada Day. And you’ve been especially attentive since November 2016, likely hoping the immigration clerks here will put some gold stars on that imaginary citizenship application of yours! They should give you extra credit for your devotion to
“All raise hands, please, who remember Rosalia. (Camera on studio smiles.)” You remember Rosalia, right? We met her in “A Painful Affair”, this collection’s fourth story: the dedicated servant of Miss Mary Margaret Pugh. Miss Pugh’s artistic patronage is not-yet-transpired in “Larry” (Larry is her half-brother), it’s an already-transpired-fact
