Under 1%. That's how many publisher recommendations and reading copies have slipped into my stacks this year (apart from paid review work). Because my policy has always been to review every book I'm sent, I've always been very particular about what makes it to my post box. But recently
"Who is Robertson Davies? It's a fair question." This is how Val Ross opens her review in The Globe & Mail on September 28, 1991. "After all, she continues, "Davies begins most of his novels with a question or a mystery, including the latest,
In Iris Murdoch’s Henry and Cato (1976), Henry Marshalson inherits the family estate when his brother Sandy dies. Henry returns to the home where his mother Gerda still lives, with her kinda-sycophantic admirer, Lucius. Cato lives nearby. So does Colette. Stephanie does not, but, because of her pre-existing
This year I added another writer to my MRE list. In truth, he was one of the writers whose stories provoked that kind of MustReadEverything commitment early on, but I didn’t have a word for it yet. Authors who told the kind of stories that I wanted on my
In which there is talk of the slim stories which have travelled with me within the city. While bulkier volumes stayed home. Like Robertson Davies' Murther and Walking Spirits (1991). And Nazanine Hozar's Aria (2019). These are awkward travelling companions: thick and heavy But some of the skinnies in
