Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1983) Women's Press, 1984 Celie begins writing letters to God because the man who is married to her mother has said that's all who will listen, all who should be bothered with listening. (It's just wrong to call him her father, after he has raped
Nicholas Ruddock's The Parabolist Doubleday, 2010 It's ironic. One of the women in Nicholas Ruddock's novel is thinking about the heroines of Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina. "Look at all those passionate women, the ones in novels, the ones who wore their hearts on their sleeves," she says. "They all
Timothy Findley's Spadework (2001) This is an author who has been particularly important to me. In that peculiar way in which someone with whom you have had virtually no contact can affect you more than people with whom you have spent years of your life. So I delayed reading his
Louisa May Alcott's Jo's Boys (1886) For all that I remembered Jo as being another sort of character in Little Women, one passionate about writing and determined to be an author, there is, at least, a taste of that, finally, in Jo's Boys. The third chapter of this novel is
Louisa May Alcott's Little Men (1971) The author makes it clear that there is no grand plot to be had in this follow-up volume to the immensely successful Little Women. [There are no spoilers here included regarding Little Men, but if you haven't read Little Women, the first in LMA's
