In the introduction to her Selected Stories, Mary Lavin wrote in 1981 of the process she used to choose the stories to be included. One from each of her eleven short story collections, she explains. Hoping that "readers would not be presented with a bookful of stories with which they
A young narrator, away from home for the first time, is in a unique position to comment on a world that seems new and fresh to her and yet there are many situations which the reader recognizes as familiar and patterns which she, as an older adult, also recognizes.
As is often the case with Alice Munro's story stories, details that a reader might overlook in everyday life take on a new significance. Take, for instance, gravel. Small chips of stone, one thinks. And, yet, gravel is actually "a loose aggregation of small water-worn or pounded stones". Although the pit
So, first, there is the matter of 2012. That which came before. My spreadsheet lists 240 books, my GoodReads shelf 247 (it's an imperfect, yet perfectly bookish world) and I've updated the pages of Books Discussed and added a list of favourite titles. My reading year ended in a burst
Paradoxically, Morgan Holly, owner of the Capital movie theatre in Maverley, who occupies the opening scene of this short story does not leave the town, but all of the other characters in this tale do leave Maverley. Random House, 2012 "And before long he found himself outside, pretending
