I've read some remarkable short story collections this year: Théodora Armstrong's Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility, Ayelet Tsabari's The Best Place on Earth, Saleema Nawaz's Mother Superior, Richard van Camp's Godless But Loyal to Heaven, Miranda Hill's Sleeping Funny, and Paul Headrick's The Doctrine of Affections. Three more collections have captured
A blindfolded woman in labour, in the back of a van that has left Evin Prison in Tehran. It's an un-put-down-able scene. Atria Books - Simon & Schuster, 2013 It's 1983, in the third year of the war with Iraq, but the fierce immediacy of the story pulls
Before I began reading Bone and Bread, I read Mother Superior, Saleema Nawaz's debut, a collection of stories. House of Anansi, 2013 About "Bloodlines", I noted: "S keeps Khalsa (pure, according to Sikh law) and B does not, so B grows larger and S grows smaller, above a Montreal bagel
A Tap on the Window feels like the quintessential late-summer read. I have to move indoors with my book sooner on August evenings, because the light doesn't last as long, but the neighbourhood still moves to other summer rhythms. And, so, that old yearning for a page-turner. Doubleday -
Imagine the Griffin and Sabine stories. Gallery Books - Simon & Schuster, 2013 But take away the artwork. And substitute notebooks for postcards. Now, combine that with the bizarre otherworldliness of Banana Yoshimoto's novels. Take their spirited heroines, and the matter-of-fact acceptance of a thin veil between the worlds.
