Originally I’d planned to split this post into two, as I gradually read through the categories for the Toronto Public Library Reading Challenge (Part One and Two), but with a lot of desk hours lost to illness this year, I’ve combined them. (Notes: Other books read for the challenge
Ipellie, Lindberg, and Saona Short Stories in October, November and December Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, short stories captureand create a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to one favourite writer and also explored two new-to-me story writers.
From these ten books alone, anyone might conclude that “we” have a lot of antiques and tigers, typewriters and troubled sisters, and that we all wear sandals with socks in Canada. (I am not a fan: if it’s cold enough for socks, it’s too cold for sandals.) Moving from
“Surfacing changed a lot. Bodily Harm was a pretty fast write. Handmaid’s Tale was a fast write. Lady Oracle took me a long time because there are so many people and it’s complex. I think Surfacing changed the most from beginning to end.” “Freeforall” leaves me craving an in-a-nutshell
“I was big on grit,” she says in an interview* where she describes finding old pages of writing from her childhood and teenagehood. She wrote a novel about an ant, still unfinished. And there were musings on the Hungarian Revolution and despair. “I had an eye for lawn-litter and
