Evidence of Mavis Gallant's wit is abound in this super short story. Tongue firmly wedged in cheek, readers marvel with the imagined writer of this short piece. A writer whose familiarity with French Crenellation is abundant. (Whereas the writer's observations left me doubting my own understanding of it, so I
Five Legs, perhaps surprisingly, is a novel of two -- not five -- parts. The first is in the voice of Professor Lucan Crackell. Take "stymied creativity" and a "failed imagination": an "amiable hypocrite who consoles himself with power in the institution, getting drunk with his students, and
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
Judy Blume's Blubber (1974) Jean Little's One to Grow On (1969) Sheila Greenwald's It All Began with Jane Eyre (1980) Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (1964) Previous shelf-discovery posts I've made have focussed on historical fiction (here, here and here) and post-apocalyptic fiction, mysteries (here) and fantasies, but the majority of my
