On the list of 10 Perfect Alice Munro sentences, recently selected by CBC, this is the first: "Every year, when you’re a child, you become a different person." It begs the question, "When does one stop becoming somebody new every year?" Perhaps after an event like the incident described in this
In interview with Harriet Gilbert, when meeting to discuss her landmark work The Country Girls as part of the BBC's World Book Club, Edna O'Brien speaks about the relationship in that novel between a young woman and a married man referred to as Mr. Gentleman. Little, Brown and Company, 2015
The Birthday Lunch is the sort of novel in which a woman stands at a casement window and drinks a cup of tea, enjoying a private view of a cherry tree and an herb garden. It is a "quiet novel" and, yet, a story which is ultimately about the primary importance
Such good reading this summer, so far. In other respects, perhaps mine has not been the most productive summer. But it all depends what one puts on a to-do list, doesn't it! What if your to-do list was all about the books in your stacks? House of Anansi, 2015
For weeks after reading Frances Whiting's Walking on Trampolines, my vocabulary was peppered with LuluBelle-isms. That's how I thought of the habit that young Lulu and Annabelle had, of mashing-up synonyms to intensify the meaning of each individual word. Gallery BooksSimon & Schuster, 2015 (2013) "I'm starmished," I would
