One wonders if the "little bride" would have sat with the Monicas on the beach in "Jakarta". Would she, in the eyes of Kath and Sonje, inhabit the model of femininity that the Monicas represent? Or would they encourage her to join them behind the logs? McClelland & Stewart,
"Give her a room of her own and five hundred a year, let her speak her mind and leave out half that she now puts in, and she will write a better book one of these days." So said Virginia Woolf. McClelland & Stewart, 1998 And although Kath
After a lifetime of collecting, Mr. Joseph Herbert Neill sold 1,000 objects to the county on the condition that they open a museum and appoint him curator. This is the story I imagine lurking behind the Walley museum in the opening paragraphs of "The Love of a Good Woman", behind D.M.
One might say that Margot was playing Barbara's game of "Apples and Oranges", choosing between a nice house and a fresh start. 1990; Penguin, 1991 But if one said too much about Margot's choice, spoilers about "Wigtime" would wriggle into the discussion. Margot has made choices, indeed, but
Alice Munro is capable of spinning readers away from the salient detail of Austin's death in a story like "Pictures of the Ice". 1990; Penguin, 1991 Yet, she is equally capable of writing an opening which cannot be set aside and which demands rereading as the story unfolds,
