So short. Four pages. And, yet, a man considering his entire life and the geo-political map of his day. Its shifting (and not-so shifting) borders are intertwined with his ideas about his marriage. This seems to draw the noose of relationship between the personal and the political uncomfortably - even
As you might have guessed, the characters in Tumbleweed are always in motion. Sometimes literally, as with a hitchhiker in the title story, who has come to an abrupt stop and views the world differently from his sudden stillness. "Through the tinted glass, I beheld quite a sight before
Delicate and deliberate, these stories are sometimes startling and always moving. In some, the darkness is overt and inescapable; in others, quietly pervasive and creeping. A passage from "Welcome to Paradise" seems to whisper of the author's motivations: "Even now I like ghost towns and abandoned houses, places that seem
It's no secret that Mazo de la Roche loved to read. So, we have sassy young Adeline pulling out a book on the ship which takes her from Ireland to the wilds of what-would-soon-be-Canada. There's at least one literary reference in each of the volumes, and sometimes these are endowed with
The thing with an explosion is that it comes out of nowhere. And that's exactly what happens in Alison Watt's debut novel. Even though I knew that the 1917 event was at the heart of this Halifax story, I was completely absorbed in Clare and Fred's ordinary workday at
