“With her book, her roses and her cake she was separated from the other members of the family in a kind of frosty seclusion.” Alayne’s frosty seclusion doesn’t sound all that bad, does it? But the point is that Alayne feels her separateness. And that's not always comfortable. Nor
I've worked in a bookstore twice in my life. Between those jobs, the Giller Prize burst onto the Canadian literary scene, in 1994. So when Bonnie Burnard's Casino and Other Stories and Eliza Clark's What You Need were shortlisted that first year, I was still fresh from the store, still returning weekly
Amabel is just a few years older than young Shirley, who lost her young husband Pete when they were newlyweds in “The Accident”; barely married, not yet disappointed. Had Amabel and Shirley been friends, able to discuss their brief experiences of married life, I wonder how their opinions might
Like the sand dollar that Rhoda’s father slips into his pocket, this is a gritty story. Her sister Joanne repatriated their father, with an air passage to back the claim, and now he has come to live with Joanne. “Then waja come here for?” “Because Regan sent me on
It’s as if Billy, from “The End of the World”, had heard the tragic story of Shirley and Pete Higgins and used it to justify his reluctance to leave Canada. Unlike Billy, Shirley and Pete were thrilled to honeymoon in Europe, thrilled by all the ordinary things made extraordinary
