Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857) Trans. Alan Russell Penguin, 1987 If you've been following along, you'll know that I was thrilled to join, and have wholly enjoyed the early discussion connected with, Frances' readalong of this classic novel, one which I had false-started with as a younger woman but had
David Bergen's The Matter with Morris Harper Collins, 2010 You might have guessed that David Bergen's The Time in Between wasn't my favourite book from the Giller Prize shortlist of 2005. It wasn't that I disliked it, so much as I felt disconnected from it. It felt like a universal
Dear Giller Shortlist, Oh, how I used to wait for your five names. Before readers could tweet about you, I camped on your webpage and, with a book in hand, pounded the refresh button religiously with every page turn. (My tech-minded fella told me it could be harmful to strike
Nell Freudenberger's "An Arranged Marriage" The New Yorker Fiction: 20 Under 40 September 6, 2010 issue This is one of the stories that I was most anticipating, and perhaps that's contributed to my feeling a bit disappointed on having finished it. You know how sometimes, imperceptibly, you work up an
Jonathan Franzen Freedom Harper, 2010 If you happened to have read my response to The Corrections last month, you might well have expected my response to Freedom to appear here sometime in 2020. But although it took me nearly ten years to get around to reading the first, it took only
