Through the summer, I read the 1966 classic novel Jubilee by Mississippi writer Margaret Walker (1915-1998). I chose it because I love the idea of having one novel in my stacks that stretches out for the whole summer. Inspired by the life of her great-grandmother, Walker takes readers across
It’s been a MARMvellous week indeed, with several in our cosy group already posting about their reading: Bill has reached farthest back into MA’s chronology with Lady Oracle; Rebecca has read The Penelopiad; Kaggsy both Dearly and “Cut & Thirst”; and Bron joined in with “Death by Clamshell”. Beyond
“It’s November; it’s almost bedtime”—in autumn 1919, when older Iris remembers reading her ABCs as a child, and determines that she’s never been the kind of person who could drive off a bridge. Neither she nor her mother was that sort, but her father could have and, it seems
In a 1990 interview* MA talks about writing The Edible Woman in a chaotic Vancouver apartment: papers strewn everywhere, piles only she could decipher, and very little furniture (including a card table loaned by Jane Rule). Not how you’d imagine writers working (chair, desk), she says. It was a
Most of the time, I turn to a story for some sense of security. For an explanation or a way to orient myself. If I’m not sure how to think about something, how to feel about a situation, sometimes reading about it in fiction has allowed me to temporarily
