The longer the books in the Love Medicine cycle, the harder it is to recall that Louise Erdrich began with short fiction, stories which linked, interconnected, taking their own time to draw in their circles before spiralling outward once more. Tracks and Four Souls were slim volumes, but readers
Not his daughter. Not Joyce. Charles Kimber didn’t think she had it in her. But the headmistress has written to say that sixteen-year-old Joyce vanished from St. Hilda’s School and spent the weekend in Albany in a hotel with a young man. A young man from a good family
My February reading lists tend to be longer than my January lists. Except for my Middlemarch February. Likely this will be true this year too, with the shorter reads in the wings. The shadow stack of graphic novels and poetry, some of Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna books: smaller
In “Madeline’s Birthday”, Madeline was sent to the Tracy family’s summer home: her divorced parents are elsewhere, living Madeline-free lives. “The Wedding Ring” tells a similar story, but from the daughter’s perspective: a first-person chronicle of the only child of a happily-divorced couple. The story begins quietly, as though
Both January and September are inspiring times for me, the idea of fresh starts and new reading projects. And December was the perfect lead-in, as I managed to avoid the usual year-end reading scramble, because so many of 2017’s reading projects were multi-year plans: Mavis Gallant’s stories, Louise Erdrich’s
