There are many amazing stories about moving from somewhere to elsewhere, about the process of elsewhere becoming somewhere. Take Rabindranath Maharaj's The Amazing Absorbing Boy - literally, amazing. It's right there on the cover. It's a real favourite of mine, in which seventeen-year-old Samuel reads comic books in Trinidad to
"No one wants to hear what’s going on in some jailbird’s heart now do they?" It comes near the end of the novel, but I suspect that Joel Thomas Hynes took this idea as a challenge, that that's what inspired his Giller-Prize nominated novel We'll All Be Burnt in
The dead fuel Jesmyn Ward's novels. She feels the weight of their stories; she shoulders them, shares them. In Sing, Unburied, Sing, their chorus of voices - even in the epigraphs but also in the novel - reverberates between and beyond the covers. Ward's are heart-shattering stories. But they
These are the kinds of stories which expose the imperfections which lie beneath a carefully smoothed comforter. Honest characterization is key, Lisa McInerney explains to Marie Gethins,: "There is absolutely no element or aspect of their characters’ lives a writer should shy away from presenting, no matter how unpleasant.
Besides Lori McNulty's Life on Mars and Mavis Gallant's stories, I've been dabbling in some other collections this year too. Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak! (1996) Drawn from a number of literary magazines and publications (including 1994's Pushcart Prize collection), these tales were gathered together to satisfy the readers who yearned
