Beginning with an arrival and ending with a departure, readers might think "Amundsen" a more conventionally told tale. Random House, 2012 (Thinking about the last story, "To Reach Japan", which began with a departure and ended with an arrival, I mean.) And, yet, both this arrival and departure
You've probably had spells like this too, when -- even though you usually turn to books for escape and entertainment and information and, well, nearly everything -- reading is impossible. Things have been unexpectedly and overwhelmingly quiet here, online, due to a couple of major offline events which completely eclipsed
"To Reach Japan" begins with a departure and ends with an arrival. McClelland & Stewart - Random House, 2012 That is not commonly how it goes, but it's not unusual in the territory of Alice Munro's stories, which often begin in the present and work backwards to the
When I was twelve, I got a boxed kit which allowed me to draw my own astrology chart. House of Anansi, 2011 More than ten years later, I finally wrapped my head around the mathematical charts in the back of the book. In the meantime, I admired the
Five Legs, perhaps surprisingly, is a novel of two -- not five -- parts. The first is in the voice of Professor Lucan Crackell. Take "stymied creativity" and a "failed imagination": an "amiable hypocrite who consoles himself with power in the institution, getting drunk with his students, and
