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
When I was browsing the library stacks the other day, looking for the next volume in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I happened upon this: JoAnn McCaig’s Reading In: Alice Munro’s Archives. And isn’t that just how it happens? How stacks of library books get out of hand? But how could I
Early in Lives of Girls and Women, readers learn that Jubilee is "not part of town, but it was not part of the country either”. Del Jordan isn’t exactly sure where she belongs either. Readers of Dance of the Happy Shades will recognize Jubilee; some of its stories take place
What is it about a title story? It always feels, to me, like the key to the collection. And while it’s true that sometimes a title story is my favourite in a collection, other times, as with “Dance of the Happy Shades”, I wondered why it was selected to bestow
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
