So many of the risks in "Deep-Holes" are either averted or declared meaningless. "Sally packed devilled eggs—something she hated to take on a picnic, because they were so messy." Nobody ate the devilled eggs anyway, so it didn't matter how messy they were. "Ham sandwiches, crab salad, lemon tarts—also a
1648 Henfryn Street and 363 Carlisle Street: "Wenlock Edge" feels so vivid that one can hardly resist keying in the significant addresses to see what appears on the digital map. These addresses do not actually exist in London, Ontario. But there is a Henfryn Line which runs north-south, just east of Clinton, Ontario. And
It's not impossible to find them, but if you read a lot of literary fiction, the novels which contain humour are outnumbered. Each of these books actually addresses a serious issue (or touches upon it, for Susan Juby's novel doesn't delve very deeply): global warming and habitat erosion, family farm
Is it something like a triangle? With happiness, unhappiness and love arranged with an equal distance between each point? Perhaps. Certainly there are triangles in "Fiction", shifting alliances and fractures. Love triangles. Happiness triangles. Just enough. Too much. The kind of happiness discussed in "Fiction" is different from that which
Things that you can slip between. They are often 'new' in nature. Perspectives transform. If I was playing $30,000 Pyramid, I might think such things, in response to the idea of 'dimensions'. At the heart of Alice Munro's "Dimensions": a woman who is fundamentally altered, facing a 'new' future, slipping
