In which I discuss some of the skinny volumes, which have nestled into my bookbag. (Meanwhile longer works, like Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber and Greg Iles’ The Bone Tree, were left at home.) Patricia and Fredrick McKissack's Best Shot in the West tells the story of Nat Love, who was born into
Lynda Barry says a “happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it’s there”. But there’s more to it, she says: “The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn’t dead.”* Doubleday Canada, 2015 If one reads a
Fever at Dawn by Péter Gárdos began with a box of letters, or, more accurately, the letter-writers, who would become his parents. House of Anansi, 2016 "But for fifty years I did not know that their letters still existed. In the midst of political unheaval and the chaos of moving to
Much of my reading this year has been preoccupied with writing. I've been reading about how Laura Ingalls Wilder's notebooks and autobiographical writing worked their way into fiction for young readers (Pioneer Girl). Robin Robertson edited Mortification, in which writers discuss work-related embarrassments, often unfolding as they were travelling for readings and public
“If prison isn’t prison, the outside world has no meaning!” So says Aurora to Charmaine in Margaret Atwood's new novel, The Heart Goes Last. McClelland & Stewart, 2015 (Penguin Random House) It dates back, the CanLit icon's interest in imprisonment, a preoccupation with the idea of lives which
