1961; Dell Publishing, 1975 Maria Gripe's trilogy is just charming. Josephine chooses her own name because the name Anna Grå is too big for her, like a pair of shoes that she needs to grow into. She is six years old. Her blue sweater is getting too small but
The Love Letter was longlisted in 1996, the year that Helen Dunmore's The Spell of Winter won the Orange Prize. The idea intrigued me straight away, even before I saw the 1999 film of the same name: a love letter addressed and signed ambiguously, discovered by a 42-year-old
So, here's what I'm pleased about. And you know when I start with that, I'm bound to be complaining a little later, right? But, first, the good stuff! When I was looking ahead at this reading year, I expected to include: short stories, re-reads, my MRE authors, and
Natalia Ginzburg's The City and the House (1985) Trans. Dick Davis This was Natalia Ginzburg's last published book, an epistolary work, which contains letters sent by a handful of Italian men and women who are struggling to understand their attachments to (and distances from) one another, those in
You've been filled with talk of letters since my Dear Autumn letter on the Equinox. It all began with one of my favourite collections of letters, written between two friends: Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952-1964 The Story of a Remarkable Friendship (Ed. Martha Freeman,
