The cover image for Anthony De Sa's Kicking the Sky perfectly encapsulates the novel's themes, structure, setting and tone.* A child's bicycle leans against a garage door, the only sign of habitation. The view of the alleyway leaves the safety of home beyond the edges of the scene. The shadows are
This is from Gabriel's neighbour, Giuditta. "One day Gabriel opened up more than usual and told me he had four sons. From four different women. In four different countries." The reader wonders if perhaps he opened up more to her than to anyone; Gabriel is a cipher, someone the reader knows
Rupert Thomson's Secrecy is suffused with deliciously disturbing images and scenes. A thin, dark ribbon of sky. Bared teeth with clumps of hair. A dead bird that dangles from a girl’s first like a flower needing water. A snake skin shed in a doorway. A secret passage. A stabbed countess. A
Everything I know about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which precipitated WWI, I learned from fiction. First, Aleksandar Hemon's short story, "The Accordian", which explores the very moment of the shots' impact, inspired by the presence of a bystander. This man seems to be the author's grandfather, standing in the
In the early 1980s, in a sixth-grade classroom in rural Ontario, a teacher used Edgar Allan Poe's stories to supplement the assigned reader for that year's English studies: a bitter experience for me as a young reader. I loved books - they were my best friends at that time - but
