Vendela Vida’s The Lovers (2010) Harper Collins, 2011 Yvonne has travelled to Datça, Turkey twenty-eight years after she first visited it. Her first visit was with her husband, on their honeymoon. On her second visit, she travels there alone: her husband has died. She used to tell people that Peter
Doris McCarthy’s Ninety Years Wise Second Story Press, 2004 This is another book that I discovered thanks to Shelagh Rogers’ The Next Chapter. You know how sometimes you hear a name so many times and you keep meaning to investigate and then, suddenly, something happens and it shifts from a
Gordon j.h. Leeanders’ To Be Continued ECW Press, 2005 Read: Sitting at freshly-assembled dining-room table. Now we can seat 8 for a meal. Or one reader and one story collection. (It was a two-course read for me.) Warning: Even if you usually spread short story collections over time, you’ll be
Jane Urquhart’s The Whirlpool (1986) McClelland & Stewart, 1997 In an early edition of Jane Urquhart’s debut novel, she credits a 1915 novel for having inspired her story: Julia E. Cruikshank’s Whirlpool Heights: The Dream-House on the Niagara River. It’s difficult to find a copy of Whirlpool Heights but, because
A quick glance at my bookshelves and you would think that Jane Urquhart is one of my favourite authors. I have all of her novels save one -- a couple of hardcovers purchased new -- but I have a habit of leaving them unfinished. Nonetheless, the themes she pursues in
