June is at the heart of this collection of stories; she is the link, the thread of light through a series of dark scenes. She is our guide to the ‘burbs: “The picture perfect suburban dream with the groomed lawns, nine-to-five jobs, 2.5 children kind of places. Domino effect.
If The Cat’s Table (2011) was a slow and steady unravelling of a young boy’s memories, yarn taut and tidy, Warlight is a mass of moth-eaten fragments, remnants of a finely-crafted woollen garment pulled from a trunk. A thing of beauty, yes, but the devastation is the first thing
Thumps Dreadfulwater. That’s his Indian name. No, wait, that’s his actual name. Which is when you know that you are not, actually, in Chinook, where Thumps Dreadfulwater solves cases. You are in Thomas King country. Readers of King’s An Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North
What a fine author with whom to launch Women in Translation month (hosted by Biblibio) one of the few contemporary authors whose work I have followed from the beginning in Sheila Fischman’s translations: Ru (2009; 2012) and Mãn (2013; 2014). Themes from both of her previous novels resurface in Vi, and
Danticat, Farnsworth, Gallant, Hunter, Li and Quade Short Stories in April, May and June Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to three familiar writers and also explored three new-to-me story writers. Just
