On the list of 10 Perfect Alice Munro sentences, recently selected by CBC, this is the first: "Every year, when you’re a child, you become a different person." It begs the question, "When does one stop becoming somebody new every year?" Perhaps after an event like the incident described in this
Over the summer, I have been reading a lot of magazines. With some magazines, I "subscribe-incessently-and-renew-unthinkingly" and, with others, I practice the "when-I'm-in-the-mood-to-browse-the-newsstand" method. Both of these purchasing methods result in a tremendous backlog of reading for me, because I'm curious about so many things that the stacks quickly become
Like Anne Tyler, the only plot that Marina Endicott has is the passage of time. The events in her novels are ordinary happenings, but there is a delicious sense of unspooling when one falls into one of her narratives. Doubleday Canada, 2015 Close to Hugh is structured over a week's time and
In interview with Harriet Gilbert, when meeting to discuss her landmark work The Country Girls as part of the BBC's World Book Club, Edna O'Brien speaks about the relationship in that novel between a young woman and a married man referred to as Mr. Gentleman. Little, Brown and Company, 2015
The Birthday Lunch is the sort of novel in which a woman stands at a casement window and drinks a cup of tea, enjoying a private view of a cherry tree and an herb garden. It is a "quiet novel" and, yet, a story which is ultimately about the primary importance
