The Laidlaws have left the Ettrick Valley in Scotland behind, that parish with "no advantages", but the family members also have left behind "long, outspoken, sometimes outrageous letters, and detailed recollections" which have inspired Alice Munro to narrate the experiences of her ancestors. McClelland & Stewart, 2006 But
The title story in this collection follows "No Advantages" closely. It presents Old James the father, Andrew, Walter, and their sister Mary, Andrew’s wife Agnes, and Agnes and Andrew’s son James,"under two years old", and recounts their experiences from "the harbor of Leith, on the 4th of June, 1818, [when] they set
McClelland & Stewart, 2006 The View from Castle Rock was not one of my favourite Alice Munro collections. Although I rushed to read it upon publication, I didn’t enjoy it as much as Runaway. On rereading, I planned a different approach. In the past, I read the collection
It's a familar theme in the Canadian landscape of letters, and it was also the topic of Adrienne Clarkson's recent Massey Lecture. "What does it mean to belong? And how do we belong? Who do we belong to?" These are the central ideas discussed in the series and they are
It seems perfect. Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be? is not really a novel. And this is not really a review. It's a collection of my collisions with understanding. Opening sentence: "How should a person be?" Subtitle: A Novel from Life Off the page, there is an interview with Shelagh
