If Letty was invited to Christina Stead’s birthday party, preparations would be extensive. Clothing, accessories, the gift: everything would have to be “just so”. (Stead was born OTD in 1902; she died March 31, 1983.) When Letty needs to find an apartment in New York City, however, she makes
I don’t like the word ‘evil’: does anyone? Well, some. If only for effect. The showrunners for this show, for instance. [I’ve not watched it. But maybe I should: I had fun with the early seasons of Supernatural and, then, lost interest when the angels arrived. And I have
Readers never meet her directly, but we are told that she looks like the Holbein portrait of Lady Barker. (Here shown in such a way that it’s easy to imagine a wallet photo.) This is the mother of Hal and Dorothy. Once George Crawley’s wife. On the surface, this
Ian Williams landed in my stack with his longlisting for the ReLit Award in 2011. This is why I read prizelists: they encourage me to read in different directions, when left to my own devices, I sometimes plod along, in familiar reading territory, simply out of habit. The title
Don’t be fooled: it’s still about Magdalena. Except she is called Lena by the “half a dozen widows of generals and bereft sisters of bachelor diplomats”. They “crowd her bedside table” – Magdalena’s/ Lena’s bedside table – with “bottles of cough mixture, lemons, embroidered table napkins, jars of honey,
