My progress through Gabrielle Roy's works has been slow but steady, and this month I requested one of the children's books, which I held out for myself as a reward for finishing six of her novels. My treat was to be Cliptail, but the only copy available in the public
Tomorrow, I will be on the move. So many of the books currently occupying a position in my stacks are bulky and heavy, that it was easy to choose amongst the skinny residents. I have one more story to read in Gabrielle Roy's The Road Past Altamont. There are only three in
Admittedly, I chose There's an Owl in the Shower because I had read Jean Craighead George's classic My Side of the Mountain. I knew of her reputation for including ecological and environmental themes in the stories she has written for children. But when I realized that it had been published in
This from Hugh MacLennan to young Marian Engel in 1956: "If I can be of any help to you, don't hesitate to write and tell me so. I'm cynical about theses, having done one myself, but I suppose they are necessary if you can avoid taking them too seriously." University
The Love Letter was longlisted in 1996, the year that Helen Dunmore's The Spell of Winter won the Orange Prize. The idea intrigued me straight away, even before I saw the 1999 film of the same name: a love letter addressed and signed ambiguously, discovered by a 42-year-old
