Over the summer, I have been reading a lot of magazines. With some magazines, I "subscribe-incessently-and-renew-unthinkingly" and, with others, I practice the "when-I'm-in-the-mood-to-browse-the-newsstand" method. Both of these purchasing methods result in a tremendous backlog of reading for me, because I'm curious about so many things that the stacks quickly become
Like Anne Tyler, the only plot that Marina Endicott has is the passage of time. The events in her novels are ordinary happenings, but there is a delicious sense of unspooling when one falls into one of her narratives. Doubleday Canada, 2015 Close to Hugh is structured over a week's time and
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
If you recognize Mary Dyer as being one of the Boston Martyrs, you will expect Beth Powning's tale to be a harrowing one. To some extent, this is the case. Knopf - Penguin Random House, 2015 But even if the historical record considers the most remarkable aspect of Mary
Unsurprisingly, “Some Women” offers readers a panoply of images of womanhood. It begins by hearkening back to an earlier time, when “girls wore waist cinches and crinolines that could stand up by themselves”. But then locates the narrator as being so old that even she is amazed by the number
