Unsurprisingly, a story named for a main character is going to be preoccupied with names and identity. It's also the first thing readers observe Queenie saying to Chrissy, when she arrives in Toronto and is met at Union Station. Her husband thinks it sounds like an animal's name, so Chrissy
Sometimes, when I begin reading an Alice Munro story, I am overwhelmed by a sense of "there it is". It's a feeling of immediate and undeniable recognition of familiar elements. Like the beginning of "Nettles", which begins with firmly rooting the reader in a time and place. It is summer.
Just as the jury enjoyed reading the stories submitted for tthe 2014 Journey Prize, other readers can also value the "exposure to a new generation of writers who are extending the tradition of Canadian short fiction well into the twenty-first century". McClelland & Stewart, 2014. Edited by Steven
Angie Adbou handles multiple narrative voices very well. Readers familiar with her earlier novels, The Bone Cage (2008) and The Canterbury Trail (2011) will know this, having inhabited narratives from varying perspectives. They will also know (as will readers of her 2006 collection of short stories, Anything Boys Can Do) that
Ater a year of new-new-new, January has been filled with the familiar, the known. It's not been about making new-shiny-library-residing friends, but about becoming better acquainted with long-time residents of my own bookshelves, remembering what drew particular authors onto my MRE (MustReadEverything) list and particular books onto my shelves. Have
