My reading in February has taken me from the U.S.S.R. to Japan, from Austria to Syria. My plan for reading in March has been all about Ireland and Wales. And because I love making lists, I’ve been making plans since January: searching the library catalogue, searching my shelves. (Springsteen fans
In “Saturday”, the mother had dreamed a different kind of life for her daughters. In “Up North”, Dennis’ mother is dreaming of a different kind of life for herself. She’s on a train, north of Montreal, heading for Abitibi, Quebec. That’s where Dennis’ father is working in the bush.
In which I discuss recent reading which deserves particular attention: two novels, spanning an African immigrant’s contemporary experience in London and a trio of English sisters’ experience of the interwar years, and a graphic memoir spanning a young boy’s experiences in Syria, France and Libya. In Harare North (2009), Brian
The image of the father in this story, unable to sleep, counting his sons-in-law instead of sheep, makes me smile. The way that he matches his memory of their faces with the litany of names, his uncertainty about the fifth, his debates over which of them is married to
In which I read, while sitting in a café, in a library and in various TTC stations. While longer volumes, like Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx and Andrew Miller’s Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, stay at home. Charles Quimper’s In Every Wave (2017; Trans. Guil Lefebvre, 2018) Narrated by
