Connecting Thread: From Secrecy to Corruption (3 of 5)

2021-12-27T15:23:02-05:00

Another voice-driven young woman’s story—Fatima Daas’s The Last One (2021)—held me rapt throughout. At first, I wondered if the repetitive variations on “My name is Fatima” that open each segment of the story would grate on me but, perhaps because the prose is arranged so that it’s almost-verse-like, it

Connecting Thread: From Secrecy to Corruption (3 of 5)2021-12-27T15:23:02-05:00

Spring 2021, In My Reading Log: Family, Food, Feminism, Faith, Fakery and Fantasy

2021-04-05T12:08:13-04:00

Nancy Johnson’s The Kindest Lie (2021) reminds me of Terry McMillan for its focus on Black working women’s lives and Brit Bennett’s The Mothers for its slant towards mothering. The novel looks back, specifically to the election of Barack Obama in 2008: “Their feet felt light and their chests,

Spring 2021, In My Reading Log: Family, Food, Feminism, Faith, Fakery and Fantasy2021-04-05T12:08:13-04:00

Mavis Gallant’s “Madeline’s Bithday” (1951)

2018-01-23T14:39:25-05:00

In “Madeline’s Birthday”, the sadness slips to the background, like it does in an Elizabeth Taylor story, with a hint of darkness besides. Madeline is a guest in the Tracy family’s summer home, and her seventeenth birthday affects every resident. Readers briefly inhabit the perspective of most inhabitants (even

Mavis Gallant’s “Madeline’s Bithday” (1951)2018-01-23T14:39:25-05:00
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