Reading in company. It’s always more fun, isn’t it? Not that a stack of Persephones and a stack of lemon cakes aren’t enjoyable in and of themselves. But there’s something about knowing that there are similar stacks of books and stacks of sweets at hand for other readers. That, just
Isobel English’s Every Eye (1956) Persephone Number 18 Persephone Books, 2000 Cynthia has died. We learn that in the first sentence of Every Eye. From Hatty. Who is telling her story from the perspective of her middle years. Hatty is freshly married and Cynthia has freshly died. Both events have
Shifting past the halfway mark in this collection, I find myself as interested in drawing lines between stories as I am in following the lines drawn within the stories. And perhaps it’s partly because I have recently pulled my copy of The Lives of Girls and Women off my shelves
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) Bantam, 1971 It’s ironic that what most stands out in the first volume of Maya Angelou’s autobiography is her voice; when she was a girl, she stopped speaking for a time, but, in looking back on the experiences of her
If I was trying to convince readers to try Alice Munro, choosing this sampling of three stories might not be the best way to approach the matter. Each is stuffed with sadness, with resignation and despair to season the blend. But it’s as though there is also a dash of
