This year I’ve been reading more non-fiction than usual. It’s not that I’ve been trying, it’s only that I’ve allowed my curiosity to access my holds queue. When I have questions after I’ve finished a novel, I’ve allowed myself to wander more than usual. It’s created an interesting rhythm
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
In chatting about the previous volume, Renny’s Daughter (1951), I mused on the future of Adeline’s romance. Because in the volume before, Return to Jalna (1956) she had committed to remaining unmarried to spend her adult life at her father’s side. (The volumes were written out of story-order. Mazo de
Story-wise, this is the fourteenth volume in the Jalna series, and the house is about a hundred years old. There is time to reflect here, so that when a new character, like Humphrey Bell, is introduced, readers are reminded of all the other characters who have lived in his
It’s been sixteen years since the matriarch Adeline died and her namesake is both daring enough to strip down and swim in a pool and old enough to catch the eye of a male cousin (who is perhaps a little over-interested in her bathing). But overall, Mazo de la
