The family stories in contemporary CanLit are not all that different from the stories and novels read by my grandmother’s generation. The women in my family did not read obsessively, no, but regularly, yes. What else was there to do in the evenings when your favourite show was in reruns
If the story were titled "Les Deceptions de Marie-Blanche", it might be translated as "The Disappointments of Marie-Blanche": an apt choice. San Francisco Earthquake, 1907 - Click for source details And, yet, as it stands, there is the added implication that Marie-Blanche has not only been disappointed by
When I was a girl, I had the same kind of advent calendar that Derek McCormack describes receiving every year from his mother, the flat ones made of cardstock, with winter scenes decorating them, little images behind each flap as you discovered them. No toys, no candies. House of
When I was a girl and allowed to choose my own books for a special occasion, I always selected an anthology. If I'd spotted a book like Rotraut Susanne Berner's The Winter Book, it would have been a shoe in. First, my choice was practical: they were larger books. (Well,
So, usually when there is a giveaway for an event or a challenge I opt out, but I didn't notice that there were prizes for Amy's Nigerian Independence Day reading event. Not until I noticed that I'd been lucky enough to win a copy of The Granta Book of the
