“August” picks up the thread from 1959’s “Travellers Must Be Content” (a story which was also collected in The Cost of Living/Going Ashore). Just as time has passed between publications, time has passed for Bonnie and her daughter, Flor, too. The stories read like bookends, all-of-a-piece, but occupying
It wasn’t so long ago that I was rereading The Box Garden (for #1977Club). But last year I was thinking only of Charleen and had forgotten whatever I’d ever known about her sister Judith, whom I’ve recently gotten reacquainted with, rereading Shields’ debut, Small Ceremonies (1976) earlier this year.
“Everything written down these days and worth reading is oriented towards nostalgia,” one of the characters in Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch declares. How handy to have David Berry’s new book On Nostalgia within reach, to illustrate the enduring interest in the matter, decades later. (Cortázar’s novel was published in Spanish
In his introduction to Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories (2002), Michael Ondaatje describes her Europe as a place of “shipwrecks” (a recurring word in this collection, he notes). Her characters are “permanent wanderers”, often from Canada and Eastern Europe, and not always from or in Paris, but Mavis Gallant
In a few weeks, Jean-Michel Fortier’s new novel The Electric Baths will be reviewed in the new issue of World Literature Today, translated by Katherine Hastings. A galloping read populated by an inordinate number of widows and tragic ends. There are some bloody bits but you're caught between gasping
