Dirty Work by Eyal Press (2021) landed in my stack following an interview with the New York Times Book Review editor. Its subtitle—Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America—summarizes the content aptly, but doesn’t express how un-put-down-able I found this book. Most of the time, when
If only Dr. Dominic Missierna could arrange for a weekly dinner with Charles Filandreux (from “Siegfried’s Memoirs” in Coming Ashore) and Henri Grippes (from “A Painful Affair” in Overhead in a Balloom). Every year weighs heavily on these men, even though the time seems to have passed too quickly
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
There have been many Christmases in Mazo de la Roche’s novels, too: not quite a hundred, but several. “Ninety-nine Christmases had been celebrated at Jalna. In its first Christmas Philip and Adeline Whiteoak had been young people and their three children infants. Now all those five were in their
“I dare say old Red-head will be delighted. If there is one thing above another that pleases him it is an addition to the clan.” That’s Renny and, it’s true, his heart beats for Jalna, which is where the Whiteoaks are. But he has standards. He’s not about the
