Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. (Looking for a swallow rather than a full glass? ORANGE Squirt below.) Loving an excerpt as much as I loved “The Dredgeman’s Revelation” brings a sense of trepidation alongside excitement when approaching the longer work. Would Swamplandia! leave me with the same pressing desire
Remember those book banners whose knickers were all twisted up over this collection? I bet this week’s stories, “Baptizing” and “Epilogue: The Photographer”, really got them going. Del has ::whispers:: met a boy. She’s still sorting out what that means. She’s still unsure what it means to be a boy.
Alina Bronsky’s Broken Glass Park (2008) Trans. from the German, Tim Mohr Europa Editions, 2010 I read the opening sentences of Broken Glass Park when I was walking home from the library. The temperature had warmed enough for me to have my mittens off, the sidewalks had melted and smoothed
Agnes Jekyll’s Kitchen Essays (1922) Persephone No. 30 Persephone Books, 2001 Agnes Jekyll explains in her introduction to Kitchen Essays that these pieces have been published in book form as a result of readers of The Times having requested such a ready reference. These traditional recipes and rituals straddle nostalgia and practicality,
Blindfolded, only hearing the prose, or seeing the opening lines pulled from the narrative, would you recognize these stories to be the work of Alice Munro based on the first few sentences alone? The opening of “Changes and Ceremonies”: Boys’ hate was dangerous, it was keen and bright, a miraculous
