When I requested Dear Writer, Dear Actress, a collection of letters exchanged between Anton Chekov and Olga Knipper, I expected them to arrive when Bill and Bron and I were reading “Gooseberries”. (Our project page is here.) If they had, my note-taking would have revolved around connections with their friendship and
There is just one more story left in our project—and it’s the shortest, only six pages, the second by Tolstoy. In the course of looking for a cover image, I learned that it was published after Tolstoy’s death, and that it was based on a real person. (Inadvertently, I
I discovered May Sarton (1912-1995) on the shelves of the local women’s bookstore. You know I covet “sets” and, even though her books were not properly so, there was consistency in their Norton editions: the tidy little pocketbook novels with a splash of colour in a design at the
On the evening I read this short story, I was also reading May Sarton’s 1938 novel Single Hound (more about that tomorrow), in which one character affectionately calls another a “gooseberry”. Even though there’s no such moment in Chekov’s short story and, indeed, the gooseberries themselves are a disappointment—I
Ibi Zoboi quickly situates her readers in Detroit, through Fabiola’s view of American Street. And Zoboi’s 2017 novel feels particularly timely as Fabiola arrives in the United States with her mother, but continues her journey alone—after her mother is detained by immigration authorities. Fabiola stays in her mother’s sister’s
