Kate Pullinger's Weird Sister (1999) McArthur & Company, 2000 I've had this book on my shelves for ages. Which I feel doubly guilty about because it was a gift from a bookish friend. But not a gift of a book she especially loved, but one that she hadn't read; she
Louise Penny's Still Life Headline, 2005 Some of you might recall my eye-rolling, woulda-been-snarky-if-I-wasn't-so-darned-Canadian letter to The Public Library late-spring this year. I offer this post to balance the scales, for there is another staff member there whom I actually look forward to seeing behind the counter. She started a conversation
If you've read both of these authors, you're probably wondering what they're doing here, sharing a title and a post like this. But as I was reading them, the other evening before bed, I was struck by a fundamental connection, in the way that I was read these novels (not
Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins NY: HarperCollins, 1997. “When young writers write to me about following in the footsteps of those who string together nouns and verbs for a living, I tell them this: every story has already been told,” said Anna Quindlen, delivering the
Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall Harper Collins, 2010 I read Michael Cunningham's first novel, A Home at the End of the World last month, and wholly enjoyed it. Nearly as much as The Hours, but the bookishness of the latter (or, perhaps I should say, the Woolfishness) left it in the
