I read Gil Adamson’s The Outlander (2007) in February 2009, on my daily subway commute, and on the afternoon that I was nearly finished reading, I started a conversation about it with another commuter, who was also reading it. I waited until I’d moved towards the door, prepared to
The characters in Shani Mootoo’s fiction often carry a burden. Cereus Blooms at Night (1996) is a lyrical and painful story of reconciling past trauma with present-day understanding (and a personal favourite). In Moving Sideways Like a Crab (2014), one character believes that all they “learned about women and
Gallant, Gould, Jolley, Kenan, Proulx, and Walker Short Stories in July, August, and September Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to four favourite writers and also explored two new-to-me story writers.
Ironically, I requested Italo Calvino’s Mr. Palomar (1983; translated by William Weaver, 1985) with Kyoto in mind, for the scene at the “garden of rocks and sand of the Ryoanji”: “The rectangular enclosure of colorless sand is flanked on three sides by walls surmounted by tiles, beyond which
Within the first few pages of Watching You Without Me, I was reminded of why I enjoy Lynn Coady’s work so much, her capacity to inhabit characters so thoroughly. Here, we have Karen, who’s returned to Nova Scotia to settle matters with her developmentally disabled older sister, following their
