In my recent reading, it’s been as much about how the story is told as it’s been about the story itself. This certainly isn’t a new idea—these examples span three decades—but sometimes the phenomenon is more prevalent in my stacks. Maybe you’ve read some of these, or maybe
The library classification data for The Outlaw Ocean suggests categories like Fisheries-Corrupt practices, Travel, Special interest, Adventure, True Crime. All of these seem correct and yet none of them seems right. This is just over 400 pages long – with another hundred pages of notes (sources, readings, digressions)
Only ten this year, so far. Without my Alice Munro project to steer me, I am not reading as many short story collections now. Over the summer, I read Cherie Dimaline's A Gentle Habit (2015) as part of All Lit Up's summer bookclub. Dimaline is a member of the Georgian
Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods (2014) Comprised of five long and two short works, these tales are peopled with losses and lonelinesses. Hues of red, black and white dominate the volume, with other colours used sparingly for contrast. Panel use is unpredictable, with images sometimes boxed but often sprawling and
Annabel Lyon says that she knew, almost immediately upon beginning to write The Golden Mean, that she would be writing the other half of its story. That was "a very male book...all male characters...about warfare and public life and politics and rationality [and] science, all the things that Aristotle represented".*
