Alfrida's apartment is crowded. “'I know I’ve got far too much stuff in here,' she said. 'But it’s my parents’ stuff. It’s family furnishings, and I couldn’t let them go.' The story about her parents, the loss of her mother, the other family with whom she visits only half-heartedly after
It's possible that the readers who will warm most fervently to The Wondrous Woo are those readers who feel a connection with a passage like this: Inanna Publications, 2013 "The first episode had come after an incident at the Woolco cafeteria when I was ten. It was $1.44
The title story of this collection, my favourite, "The Variance", is filled with so many details that it reads a little like a logic puzzle. (I like logic puzzles and short stories.) 2012; Doubleday - Random House, 2013 Sometimes the details have direct and practical significance, as with
Shivan understands, years later, that his grandmother sees herself as the peréthi from the parable. She lives like a ghost, naked and hungry, surrounded by pleasures that she cannot enjoy. Doubleday - Random House, 2013 "Everything she touched, everything she loved, disintegrated in her hands." Readers benefit from Shivan's
You can imagine Harry Salter, the main character in Don Gillmor's second novel, nodding along with Murray. Random House Canada, 2013 Murray is actually a character in an Alice Munro story, looking back at his much-changed life, but the story is familiar. "Does it deserve to be called
