Doris McCarthy’s Ninety Years Wise Second Story Press, 2004 This is another book that I discovered thanks to Shelagh Rogers’ The Next Chapter. You know how sometimes you hear a name so many times and you keep meaning to investigate and then, suddenly, something happens and it shifts from a
Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion Knopf, 1987 I first read this as a teenager. I’d already been reading a lot of adult literature, even if I was still regularly re-reading childhood favourites like the Anne books and still discovering some classics like K.M. Peyton’s Flambards stories and
It was a bitterly cold, blustery day in January 2003. I started reading the book at my desk, which was under the eaves next to a small window. There was a small space heater humming near my feet because the walls up there were cold to the touch, and the
Stacey May Fowles’ Be Good Tightrope Books, 2007 The substance of this passage, from the early pages of Stacey May Fowles’ first novel, could as easily have been pulled from one of Lynn Coady’s stories, or from Darren Greer’s Still Life with June: “Life is a series of painful, tragic,
Alison Pick's The Sweet Edge Raincoast, 2005 You know how sometimes you pick up a book and it's just not the right timing? That was true for me and Alison Pick's first novel, The Sweet Edge, which I first picked up, shortly after publication, in 2005. Even though I'd been
