The turkeys, Steve Gauley, a young girl: drownings. (In my memory of this story, only one of these stood out: wrongly, as it turned out.) Re-reading "Miles City, Montana" reveals the intricate layering of Alice Munro's stories, the multiple threats of drowning and its actual occurrence. One. Then the next.
The title of Grace O'Connell's debut novel is pulled from a poem by Helen Humphreys, "Blurring".* It's ironic that the closer you examine something, the harder it is to focus, and this is a truth which Maggie Pierce inhabits when Magnified World opens. She is reeling from her
Dundurn, 2011 The ReLit shortlist was announced earlier this week, but I'm still reading from the longlist. Farzana Doctor's Six Metres of Pavement (Dundurn, 2011) was also nominated for the Toronto Book Award. That's fitting because the setting plays an important role in this story, but much of the drama
In today's bookish chatter: a plateful of Rosemary Nixon's Kalila and two snack-sized servings of Britt Holmström's Leaving Berlin and George Elliot Clarke's Red. If Rosemary Nixon's Kalila came with a cover summary, many readers would put the book aside. And, yet, only a few pages into the story, the
Well, then, I'd be lying. Because nothing is like Anne of Green Gables, right? But I'll Be Watching gave me a lot of the same feelings that reading my battered copy of Montgomery's story gives me. That's bound to sound hyperbolic, so let me explain. Pamela Porter's novel opens
