Lynda Barry says a “happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it’s there”. But there’s more to it, she says: “The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn’t dead.”* Doubleday Canada, 2015 If one reads a
It's clear from the beginning: one might long for escape from this narrative, might opt for a bloody end rather than endure more misery. House of Anansi, 2016 "No one but a fool could look so happy in a miserable house, could they? The mice here probably throw
Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and, most recently, The Widow: girls make for good pageturners. But Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins and Fiona Barton are looking to tell different kinds of stories about girls. In a BookPage interview, Gillian Flynn tries to explain why Gone Girl captured "the popular
Three of these books were inspired by the conjunction between my own shelves and this year's Random House Bingo, which has a CanLit theme. The Tiger Claw filled my Nominated-for-the-Giller square, Evan Munday's second October Schwartz for the Mystery-or-Thriller square, and Elaine Lui's book about her relationship with her mother
What I was not carrying in my bookbag this month: David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, Shauna Singh Baldwin's The Tiger Claw and the third volume in G.R.R. Martin's Ice and Fire series. These hefty volumes stayied at home, but these slimmer books were travelling this month. And there was more to-ing and fro-ing this month
