Originally published almost exactly 32 years ago, the events depicted in "Dulse" could have taken place 32 years prior and will, likely, still ring true 32 years hence. Lydia is a woman alone, not freshly alone -- for she has been divorced for nine years -- but self-consciously alone. Something
The first story in The Moons of Jupiter is a two-parter, the first originally published in "Chatelaine" and the second in "Saturday Night", in 1979. In later collections, interconnected stories were not necessarily set apart within a collection, but these two stories are exceptionally tight-knit. And because of this, with
Jeff Lemire's style is immediately recognizable. The colours are sombre, earthy. Faces are often smudged with shadow. Sometimes entire pages appear to be shadowed. The lines are raw, sometimes inexact. Details in the background are sometimes perfectly drawn, like expertly squared tiles, and other times they are hasty cross-hatchings, a
Teju Cole, Open City Recorded Books, 2011 Reader: Kevin Mambo It was fitting that this was my first audiobook of 2012; I was walking the streets of my own city, listening to this story, while the narrator, Julius, was walking the streets of New York City. He is walking, the birds
David Bezmozgis' The Free World HarperCollins, 2011 The Krasnansky family is making their way out of Soviet Russia, travelling to Rome. Samuil, the patriarch, is annoyed by the tour guide's suggestion that the history of Western civilization could be plotted along the road that the bus is travelling. "Their history:
